


I Carry These Heart-Shapes Only to You

by ladyflowdi, ships_to_sail



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Banter, Blow Jobs, Body Worship, Cabarets, Clothing Kink, Drinking, First Kiss, Found Family', Hand Jobs, Happy Ending, Intercrural Sex, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Mentions of War Crimes, Military Violence, Mutual Pining, Nightmares, Period-Typical Homophobia, Play Fighting, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recreational Drug Use, Romance, Slow Burn, Thunderstorms, World War II, hand holding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-14
Updated: 2020-06-16
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:07:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 180,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23652811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyflowdi/pseuds/ladyflowdi, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ships_to_sail/pseuds/ships_to_sail
Summary: Patrick is just getting ready to leave when he spots him across the bar. The man has his head thrown back in laughter, the lines of his neck long and graceful. His smile is its own gas light, cutting through the smoke of the bar like sunshine off the Seine, a literal impossibility at this late hour. Patrick can’t hear his laugh over the music, but he doesn’t need to. He’s so busy watching, he doesn’t see the waitress drop another drink on the table until it’s too late, and she’s already moved on to serving the next table. Now that it’s here, he’s not going to turn it down.OrTwo lives, seven days, one amazing city.
Relationships: Patrick Brewer/David Rose
Comments: 401
Kudos: 518





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> Here it is, friends, the WWII AU that no one technically asked for, but that Di and I are writing anyway! As of now, this stands at eight outlined chapters, and we're planning on dropping one a week. We couldn't do any of this, of course, without the help of our amazing betas [DP](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DisgruntledPelican/pseuds/DisgruntledPelican), [TINN](https://archiveofourown.org/users/this_is_not_nothing/profile), [helvetica](https://archiveofourown.org/users/helvetica_upstart/pseuds/helvetica_upstart), and our sensitivity reader [whetherwoman](https://archiveofourown.org/users/whetherwoman/pseuds/whetherwoman). They have been the most amazing team of grammar correctors, question askers, and cheerleaders we ever could've asked for.
> 
> Given the historical context and time period this is set in, Di and I just want to caution you to check your tags, as well as to let you guys know that we'll be updating tags as we go and shifting the rating of this story from "M" to "E" at the chapter four mark. We're so glad y'all are on this adventure with us, and we hope to do right by this story!

_Spring, 1945_

Patrick is just getting ready to leave when he spots him across the bar. The man has his head thrown back in laughter, the lines of his neck long and graceful. His smile is its own gas light, cutting through the smoke of the bar like sunshine off the Seine, a literal impossibility at this late hour. Patrick can’t hear his laugh over the music, but he doesn’t need to. He’s so busy watching, he doesn’t see the waitress set another scotch on the table until it’s too late, and she’s already moved on to serving the next table. Now that it’s here, he’s not going to turn it down. 

He sinks back into his chair, the roughspun wool of his uniform pulling on an invisible splinter in the wood. The table is ringed in dark, ageless water rings, the grooves and burns and discolorations that decorate all bar tables across the world. It’s a grounding, settling thing, and Patrick traces along a deep gouge that runs underneath the cut angles of the highball glass, the ice clinking gently as it melts. 

The woman onstage is singing a French chanson ditty, something sweet and soft and as bright as the sparkles of her cocktail dress, the light catching on the ice in his glass. Her voice is crisp and clear and so beautiful, for all that he can’t understand a word, but even the curves of her body and the shine of her smile are a pale shadow to the man sucking up all the light in the room. Patrick tries to focus on the peaty, dry smell of the scotch as it washes over the back of his tongue. It burns, and he makes a hissing sound deep in the back of his throat as the singer draws out her final note.

That keeps happening to Patrick, little shocks of beauty that catch him off guard and make it feel like his brain is rattling around in his skull, the reverberations of a different kind of mortar shell. It’s not that he’s not used to seeing beautiful things — he’s come half way around the world and has yet to see something as beautiful as a midsummer sunset over the placid waters of Lake Nipissing — it’s just that he’s not used to the _volume_ on the beauty of things he keeps seeing. They’re too loud, too sharp, too colorful and brash and _present_ , and it cuts Patrick off at the knees. The paintings, the music, the architecture and smells and people. 

Maybe most especially the people. 

Patrick can feel the gentle pressure on the back of his head that means someone is looking at him, but he keeps his focus on the singer; on the single drummer behind her dragging his metal brush across the taut drumskin, the susurration settling over Patrick like a mediation. He lets his eyes drift closed so he can better dig into the meaning behind the music, and he keeps them closed until the song is done, even as he feels the waitress brush by him, hears the sharp, thin clink of glass on wood that means she’s set down another round.

When Patrick finally opens his eyes, the singer is saying her “merci”s and making her way off stage, and the drink at his elbow doesn’t look anything like the short two fingers of amber liquid he’s used to. The glass is tall, and thin, but what’s inside looks nothing like a Collins. It bubbles, and Patrick thinks he can maybe smell it from here. When he picks it up and sniffs at it gently, the champagne tickles his nose and he sneezes, splashing the tiniest bit over his hand and table. He shoves the stretch of skin between his thumb and forefinger between his mouth on instinct and sucks off the bittersweet liquid. It tastes of lemon and simple syrup and — god, he really does hate gin, but even so. 

His eyes scan the bar, his hand still locked between his lips, until he lands on the one person he already knew he was looking for.

The stranger lifts a single, broad eyebrow and raises his glass in a toast from across the bar. And Patrick Brewer was raised well enough to know that you never refuse a toast.

The man looks like this drink tastes, sparkling bubbles at the back of his throat, sour citrus notes, the earthy tones of gin. The composition shouldn’t work, from his wide lapel to his dark brows, to the hair— teased up in a style Patrick has never seen before, high off his head and swept back in a mockery of current military regulation. His jacket is cut to accentuate the breadth of his shoulders, the narrowness of his waist, and ends almost three inches too short from the wrist. It makes Patrick hot under the collar, that flash of pale skin stretched taut over angular wrist bone, and he takes another drink before he makes the space to think about why. He should look ridiculous, like a teenager wearing last season’s church jacket before a summertime growth spurt. He doesn’t. He doesn’t look ridiculous at all. 

Before his life was demarcated by war and food rations and heavy wool and drab olive cotton, Patrick had taken Rachel on a trip to visit the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, where the art director at the time had held a retrospective of Pablo Picasso’s major works. Looking across the bar, Patrick feels a little bit like he did then. _It’s called Three Musicians,_ Rachel had said, her warm brown eyes laughing at him, and with him. Trust Patrick to narrow in on anything to do with music, even in an art museum. _The composition shouldn’t work but somehow you feel movement, you hear trombones and drums. You can almost smell the cigars and perfume. The deeper you look, the more you see._

Patrick is a sensible, practical man raised by salt-of-the-earth parents, but even he recognizes art for what it is. And the man, with the little smirk on his face, fingers glinting with silver rings, is a Picasso in a room full of pastoral landscapes. Patrick drops his hand from his mouth just as the man’s dark brown eyes, nearly black in the lighting of the bar, land on him with a startling intensity that makes his breath catch in his chest. The thin, delicate glass of his drink is starting to sweat in the warm air of the bar, and almost slips from his hand as he brings it to his mouth. 

In the years to come, when there are few positive memories he can pull out and play on his mental reel-to-reel, this is one of the ones that will never lose its color. No matter how many times he plays it back as the world around him falls into chaos and pain and an eternal and crushing sense of grey, the sharpness of this moment will never fade. 

He’ll sit in the dirt and the dark and pray and remember: the bitter, effervescent flow of bubbles, the underlying bite of lemon that somehow both grounds and elevates the earthy juniper that makes the back of his nose burn. And at the bottom of it all, a sweetness that spreads across his tongue as the man at the bar watches his every move, follows him with his eyes, traces the trajectory of the glass as it leaves Patrick’s lips, empty, and remains clutched loosely in his hand.

In the months to come, when the bullets fall and adrenaline chokes him, Patrick will remember this moment in perfect detail: his legs stretching to stand, his stomach echoing the swoop of a bomber roll with every slow, deliberate step that closed the space between him and this stranger. 

Patrick sets his glass down on the worn bar next to the stranger, using the edge of his middle finger to ease the transition and muffle the sound, although no one would be able to hear it over the Andrews Sisters-eque trio that has just arrived onstage. Patrick’s chin tilts back and his eyes travel up the expanse of skin that caught his attention from across the room. From this close, he can see the subtle imperfections that make humans beautiful in all their forms — a small scar that must be left over from shaving, a tiny patch of dark stubble, perhaps missed during that same bathroom visit, a fading crescent of deeper red just peeking out from behind the button band of his wide-lapeled dress shirt. Patrick has a long moment of not being able to tear his eyes away from that one, and by the time he does, he’s caught the attention of the mystery man. 

He turns from the woman he’s talking to, a shorter, dark-eyed brunette beauty who wears an air of practiced indifference that immediately makes Patrick feel comfortable, and rakes his eyes slowly down Patrick’s body, pausing to take in his rank insignia at his shoulder, the pressed line of his pants as they trail away from his thighs and down over the front of his calves. He quirks an eyebrow at the polished, sturdy military boots, and Patrick’s never seen a human face that can do that, whose muscles spring and coil and wave in minute fractions that seem a Morse code that Patrick doesn’t have the master key to yet. 

The other man clears his throat and the space between that noise and when he speaks stretches like taffy between the two of them. “Well. Hello, stranger.” 

The man’s voice is husky, growing from a whisper so that Patrick has to strain to catch the first word he says. It puts his body that much closer, forces the other man to shift backwards on his heel, his eyebrows rising on his face. Patrick wants to do it again, wants to shift like a lodestone just to watch all the ways this man’s face would follow suit. But the stranger has spoken now, made the first foray into conversation, and it would be rude for Patrick not to return the gesture. 

“Hello. Thank you, for the drink.”

“What drink?”

“The…” Patrick gestures towards the empty glass, realizing for the first time that he’d drank the entire thing without ever learning what it was. “The lemon-gin-whatever this was. It was delicious.”

“It’s called the French 75,” the woman pipes up, her mouth folded into the kind of smile that Patrick has seen before, and rarely means anything but trouble. “You know, after the —” 

“Artillery, yeah.” Patrick finishes for her and holds out a hand, taking her fingers in the warm wrap of his and shaking them once, firmly, bowing his head in her direction. “It's a pleasure, Ms…"

“Stephanie,” she returns, and the mystery man beside her snorts into his cocktail. Patrick glances over in just enough time to see him roll his eyes, and there’s something in the action that worms it’s way under Patrick’s skin, lodges just underneath his fourth rib, towards the back where he feels it every time he takes a breath. 

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Stephanie. I suppose I should be thanking you for the drink, then?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t suppose that,” she says smoothly, her eyes sliding to the mystery man, who has his lips wrapped over his teeth and is glaring daggers at Stephanie. 

Patrick looks between them and feels a wave of exhaustion beginning to well up from the soles of his feet. He nods a few times, and shoves his now-empty hands in his pockets. He fingers the edge of his pocket knife on the left, a small book of matches on the right, and wishes he hadn’t stopped smoking the day he’d said goodbye to Rachel. 

“Well, then. _Whoever_ it is I should thank — thank you,” and he turns, his boots squeaking against the planked floorboards. He’s three more steps away than he thinks he’ll get when he hears a frustrated little groan behind him and the mystery man calls out.

“Fine! Fine, yes, you’re welcome. I’m glad you enjoyed it.” His voice is soft enough around the edges that it makes Patrick stop walking for fear of stomping it back out into silence. But he’s still glaring at Stephanie, not looking at Patrick, and so Patrick also doesn’t return, doesn’t go any closer. “I’m David.”

And that’s all it takes. Patrick closes the distance with sure, small steps, though something keeps him from closing the last foot between them, a pocket of space where all of society’s expectations live. He opens his mouth to speak but David shakes his head quickly, his dark eyes warm and laughing, fanning out from each corner like peacock’s feathers dusting over his olive skin. “Nope, no. Let me guess, okay? This is the best part of meeting new people, especially people you never expected to meet.”

Patrick smiles - he can’t help it, like it’s been pulled right up from the protected, warm little spot where his heart has taken shelter. He hasn’t felt the urge to smile like that in months. “Guess what? My _name_?”

“Mhm,” and Stephanie snorts out loud, and it’s the most unladylike thing Patrick has ever heard. She follows it up by pushing the stool beside her out with a foot, and Patrick catches a clue, taking a seat. “This is a thing he does. Like a party trick, but not at all like that.”

“ _Oh-_ kay,” David says, glaring at Stephanie as she raises her hands, palms forward in surrender. There's a lived-in quality to their relationship, whatever it is, and there's a softness to the edge of the way they look at each other. Fleetingly, Patrick wonders if they're here together, or waiting for their significant others. That is, until David reaches for his hand at the same time that he says, "May I?", answering his own question before Patrick has a chance to consider the answer himself.

Not that the answer would've changed his mind. He looks down at his hand cradled palm-up in David's much broader one. David's staring at the lines on Patrick's palm like they're map coordinates, and it makes Patrick look at his hand with a renewed closeness. There are oil stains he missed when he'd fixed up his bike earlier, and a small paper cut on his middle finger he doesn't remember getting. It's a strange sensation, looking at your own body like you would a stranger’s, cataloging it's small pains and permutations like they don't belong to you, don't add a harmonic layer to the orchestration that is life and all it's mess. Patrick looks at his hands and sees a life that feels comfortable, and homey. He thinks maybe David really can figure out who people are this way.

"You work with your hands." It's like David pulled the words from his brain and he makes a small noise of assent. "Your last name is something...productive. Something you make. Taylor, or Fisher, or Smith." The pads of his fingers twitch against David's where he's gently pressing them flat. "Did I guess it?”

“Brewer,” Patrick says, shocked. “My last name is Brewer.”

“First try,” Stephanie says, tipping her drink to David with a pleased hum.

“Brewer, then,” Daivd says. “So, Mr. Brewer. Your first name has...two syllables, nothing long, nothing fancy. Something you could shorten when you need to, but leave long when you're feeling _adult_." The word tumbles out of David's mouth with a lascivious roll and Patrick feels chills spike up his back. David flicks his eyes up, and Patrick doesn’t know how he missed the length of those lashes, the shadow they cast on high cheekbones. “It’s dark in here, but there’s something about the light. You’re a bit ginger,” and David brushes his thumb over Patrick’s temple, brazen and bright and without a care in the world for how it could be interpreted. Patrick can’t help the instinctive pull back, startled enough that his knee knocks into Stephanie’s stool, and they both burst out laughing. 

Patrick hates being laughed at during the best of times, and he pulls away, makes to stand, but David tightens his hold, shaking his head even as he snorts. “No, no, I’m sorry, we’re not laughing at you.”

“We’re laughing at you a little bit,” Stephanie says, but her smile is warm, and she nudges his ankle with the toe of one pointy high heel. “You military boys are always so unflappable, until you’re flapped.”

“I don’t think that's grammatically correct,” Patrick says, because he simply can’t help himself, and the smile on David’s face is like starlight, dark and mesmerizing and so painfully _sweet_. 

“A bit ginger,” Stephanie prompts, glass hanging from her fingertips with the casual ease of a woman used to holding cocktails.

“A bit ginger,” David agrees, stroking ever so gently along the big vein on the back of Patrick’s hand, the fine bones of his wrist. “Second generation. Your father came over before the first war. Scots. Or Irish. You’ve got the build.”

“Short?”

“Solid and well-built. Strong. And yes, short,” David says, and his eyes are laughing, and Patrick startles himself with wishing he could get closer to count each line at the corner of David’s eyes. “Hmm. Connor? No, Connor’s tend to be pricks.”

“I might be a prick.”

“You’re not a prick, Brown Eyes,” Stephanie says, and Patrick tries not to notice how short her dress is when she recrosses her legs - short even by Parisian standards, and with a run up her nylons that looks anything but accidental. “David, he’s a prick. Me, _I’m_ a prick. You came over to thank this one for buying you a drink like the gentlemen your mother brought you up to be. You’re not a prick.” 

His pride is wounded, because he’s an idiot, but David is humming low under his breath. “Maybe you’re an Aidan. Solid, strong name, Aidan.”

“If you spend the next fifteen minutes listing every Irish name you know, I’m leaving,” Stephanie says with a cutting glance at David. He languidly rolls his shoulders, and it matches the roll of his eyes as he huffs out a little breath.

“ _Fine_. Not an Aidan either, then.” He refocuses on the skin of Patrick’s palm, tracing along the crease through the center of his palm with the edge of his fingernail. It’s just on the edge of hurt, a scratching little thing that reminds him of a sunburn, and it makes a strange sort of heat flush up the back of his wrists. “Hm. Something Biblical, maybe. Joseph?”

“Or Peter?” Stephanie offers, bored. 

“Don’t tell me you’re a Saint Patrick or some such thing,” David chuckles into the heavy air of the bar, and Patrick feels it dust across his palm and pulls his hand back. He doesn’t say anything, but he can’t help the curve of his mouth, can’t pull all forty-three muscles in his face back under his control. 

“Holy shit,” Stephanie whispers, a real sense of awe in her voice, and Patrick looks at her with his eyebrows nestled in his hairline. “It’s never, I mean. He’s only actually done that, like. Three times.”

“Really?” Patrick’s eyes fly back to David, whose mouth is slack as his eyes sparkle, and he’s looking between Patrick’s face and the place where Patrick’s hand just was. “I thought that was your big party trick!”

“It is!” David’s hands immediately fly through the space in front of him, his voice defensive. “And _Stephanie_ here is forgetting the time I did it with Midge and that man she was seeing, whatever his name was. But — you are.”

“Am what?”

“A Patrick?”

“ _A_ Patrick? Yes, I’m a Patrick. Patrick Brewer,” he sticks out his hand and feels David’s fingers wrap around the back of his palm and even though the stretch of time between presses of flesh has been minutes, it feels different. To place his hand in David’s with his name no longer a game, or a mystery. To be known as Patrick Brewer. “It’s nice to meet you David…”

“Rose,” he says, and he says the word like it’s an entire sentence. Like he’s used to a spark of recognition flashing when he issues the name like a password. But — it’s a beautiful name, as beautiful as the man sitting in front of him, looking like art in a world made drab by war and suffering. He shouldn’t be real, David Rose, but here they are, in a GI bar in Paris surrounded by boys in uniform, drinking bad champagne and wishing they were anywhere but here.

It’s the first time since he got drafted that he doesn’t wish he were somewhere else. 

Patrick’s never been one to really believe in fate, but it sure feels like something brought him right here to this moment in time, one filled with promise and excitement and the sparkle of a man with laughing eyes and a smile so full of mischief that something Patrick has ignored his entire adult life goes _tight_ inside him. 

A crash – one of the musicians has dropped something behind them, in prepping for the next set. Whatever moment he and David had been hanging in snaps like cheap thread, and David looks away first, rolling his eyes and tossing back the rest of his cocktail. “No. Nope. Not tonight. I cannot deal with her shrieking Stevie, you promised she wasn’t playing tonight.”

“I’m sorry — Stevie?”

It’s Stephanie’s turn to roll her eyes, as she knocks back the rest of her drink in a long, slow pull. She meets his eye and sort of lazily dips one eyelid closer to her face, in what Patrick thinks is supposed to be a wink. “It’s what my friends call me. What’d you think, Brown Eyes? You wanna call me Stevie?”

There’s a gentle slur to her words, a drag on the sentence that makes it feel like she’s pushing the words out of her mouth, and when she stands she seems to unravel from her chair, liquid and slow, her hand bracing on David’s forearm. There’s a not-exactly-small gem on the ring wrapped around her middle finger, and a thin band of gold wrapped around her wrist, and there’s an easiness to the way she rests on David, letting her body weight fall against his under the press of dual weights of alcohol and gravity. 

He’s a million miles away from home, from girls who act like Rachel, and from, well. He doesn’t know that there’s anyone else in the world who quite fits the mold David Rose came from. And he does. He wants to be this woman’s friend. For tonight, at least, he wants to be in their world. 

It’s not a decision that makes sense, but very little about his night has made sense since he opened his eyes to a drink he didn’t order, and he’s not about to start digging his heels in against the universe now. That’s not how Marci Brewer raised her boy to be. 

“I’ll tell you what,” he says, reaching out and plucking her small beaded handbag off the center of the table. “Drop the ‘Brown Eyes’, and I’ll call you whatever you’d like.”

Stevie smiles and wraps her fingers around the other end of the clutch, her eyes shooting to David as a wicked smile spreads across her face. “Oh, I like him.” She turns her gaze on him, “I like you.”

David’s eyes are creased and warm and he doesn’t say it, but Patrick thinks David might like him, too.

She loops her arm through Patrick’s, pressing her palm to the back of his wrist, and Patrick feels a bubble of warmth in the pit of his stomach. He’s not used to people who touch easily, and freely, and it throws him for a moment, especially when David’s broad hand brushes across his lower back as he opens the door onto the cool Parisian night, escorting him and Stevie into a night of low-hanging stars and the flicker of possibility. 

*

Patrick has been stationed in Paris for two months, and on leave for a full 24 hours, and has still never seen the Paris that David Rose walks in every minute of his day.

The first thing Patrick does once they clear the doorway of the bar is slip the olive green, stiff military wool cap over the back of his head, pulling the front peak over his forehead and letting the back dip down towards the nape of his neck. It’s a tight fit, and he catches David watching him as Stevie pulls a slim cigarette case out of her handbag and slides one between her lips.

“What?”

“It’s just — is that hat regulation?”

“Of course it is. Why?”

“No reason! Just.” David turns and starts to walk, and Patrick wishes he didn’t feel a tug behind his navel, a push behind his kneecaps as he starts to follow him.

“Just what,” Patrick says at his elbow.

“Well. It doesn’t quite reach your ears, does it?” 

Patricks hand flies briefly to his cap, feels the space between the band and the shell of his ear, which feels hot to the touch in a blush he can’t see. The laugh that startles out of David sounds like that dropped drum in the club, bright and brash and loud like it’s been shocked out of him. A long time ago, before he stepped over the line that divided his life from the Before to the After, Patrick had loved being teased. David’s smile brings him back to that simpler time, when he was just _Patty Brewer_ playing Friday night football, working at the general store to save money for college. For the first time since Canada put a gun in his hands, he feels wholly and completely himself. It’s been such a long time since he remembered what that was, and the unexpected suddenness of emotion makes his throat tight. 

He can’t get misty in front of the glamorous, gorgeous David Rose —not when he’s still looking at Patrick waiting for a reaction, the corner of one mouth ticked up. Luckily, Patrick can’t help himself. “This, from a man wearing a jacket three inches too short in the sleeve.”

Stevie bursts into laughter, the red point of her cigarette wobbling in the dark, and David’s grin broadens even more. “Excuse me, I’ll have you know this is a prototype from Lelong’s first men’s line.”

“You’re sure you didn’t find it at the Salvation Army?”

“Not with what he paid for it,” Stevie says, blowing a thin stream of smoke into the night. She loops her arm through Patrick’s and pulls him down the street, in the direction David is already headed in. Neither of them seem to mind the crisp fall air, and they both look utterly at home in the light of street lamps and restaurants. 

Patrick will never get used to the _press_ of people at night in Paris, the sound of voices and music and laughter spilling through doorways, coming from outdoor dining tables. There are people walking everywhere, with dogs and partners and children, smoking and laughing, and the air smells like _food_ , like bread and garlic and all of the delicious flavors of home. 

It’s hard to believe that this city had been occupied by the Germans just last year, not when the French had so determinedly taken back everything that had been stolen from them for almost five years. 

David turns to walk backwards without a care in the world for the people all around them, smiling at Patrick with all the delight of a kid in a toy store. “Alright Stevie, dealer’s choice.”

“We’re not going back to that shithole with the drummer you like,” Stevie mutters around her cigarette, reaching down to tug on the ankle strap of her heel. Patrick stops to lend her his elbow, and Stevie looks pointedly at the offered arm, then to David, as if to say, _et tu?_ She takes Patrick’s elbow gratefully and tugs at her shoe until the buckle sits right on her ankle. “I hate that place. It made my hair smell like booze and cigars for a week. Also, this one’s stomach just made a very rude noise, and we all know food lets you drink more.”

“Oh, _food_ ,” David says on a sigh, with the same tone one would use to describe a sweetheart back home. Patrick concurs, because food is one of the greatest pleasures in his life. “Yes, let’s eat. _Pierre’s_?”

“Absolutely not, I had the shits for a week,” Stevie says, and Patrick jerks from his head to his toes in an effort not to laugh out loud at a lady. “How you eat that garbage, _willingly_ , and _pay for it,_ I’ll never know.”

“It’s Asian-inspired French seafood,” David tells Patrick, dimple at the corner of his mouth. 

“We’re not giving Patrick the shits for a week. He’s a — what branch do you serve in, anyway?”

“I’m a captain in the Royal Canadian Air Force,” he says, because it’s the safest answer, if not wholly the truth.

David stops in the middle of the street. “You’re a captain?”

“Yes?” Patrick looks between him and Stevie. They’re staring at each other, wide-eyed.

“Twyla doesn’t know half of what she says on a good day, much less when reading cards,” Stevie says, though there’s a note of wonder in her voice. “Stop it.” 

“He’s a captain,” David says, and bursts into such loud laughter that he startles the couple passing them on their left. “You’re a captain.”

“Last I looked,” Patrick says with a flash of annoyance because he hates not being in on the joke, and David has set Stevie off so that she’s hanging onto his arm to keep from collapsing to the street.

But David is so _warm_ when he falls into step beside him, the wide shoulder of his silk jacket brushing against the rough wool of Patrick’s. “ _Petit à petit, l'oiseau fait son nid_ ,” he murmurs, in the most flawless and beautiful French Patrick has ever heard. Patrick has been here for two months but he’s picked up very little, aside from _merci_ and _salle de bains_ , relying on the French phrasebook he was issued for everything. It’s tucked in his front breast pocket, close to his heart, and he wonders what David would do if he were to pull it out now, jot down what he just said, so he could keep this moment forever. 

It sinks on him, the gravity of such a thought. This feeling that tickles down his spine, spreads through every nerve and scratches at the back of his throat, has no place in his world. He thought he’d been building his life on a solid foundation of concrete, with stones made of _certainty_ in who he is. 

Instead here he is, in Paris in the fall, arm-in-arm with a firecracker of a woman and shoulder-to-shoulder with the most dangerous man he’s ever met, and the foundation under his feet is crumbling where he stands. 

“What does it mean?” he asks, softly. 

But David just smiles, something warm and too personal for their evening stroll. A smile not personal enough. “It means our night is just starting, Captain Brewer.”

Patrick bites down on the inside of his cheek and trains his eyes on the pavement, watching where the worn leather of his boots crosses with the slick patent shine of David’s wingtips and Stevie’s heels, their banter settling in around him like the comfortable buzz of another language. They’re discussing people and places he’s never heard of, a patter of the wealthy that Patrick thought only existed on the silver screen, but instead is here beside him, in the small silver glint off the wide bands wrapped around four of David’s fingers. 

He follows them up the Rue Monge, his hand in his pockets as Stevie flits between him and David, picking her way around the small piles of bricks and gouges in the concrete, the small scars of a war raging around them, pushing in even here, into the warm cocoon of a night that wraps around all three of them. At the corner of Rue Censier, Stevie stops at an old man, sitting with a basket of carnations. It’s well past ten, and his eyes look tired, but he speaks in a rounded, kind voice and giggles at whatever it is Stevie says. Patrick thinks again of his phrasebook, at what it would be like to live enough in another language to have it roll off his tongue like water. 

When she turns, she’s got three carnations in her hand, two red and a white. The white she tucks into the high pile of her hair, the other two she holds out to David and Patrick. David just stares at her, as Patrick takes a step forward and plucks the thin stem out of her hand. It’s surprisingly damp and cool to the touch, and he rubs the pads of his fingers together after slipping into the corner of his buttoned chest pocket. 

David cuts him a glance that Patrick can’t read, before rolling his eyes and taking the flower. He doesn’t put it anywhere, though, instead beginning to spin the small flower in his broad fingers, faster and faster until the petals blur and the whole thing is just a tiny mass of red.

Stevie slips her arm back through Patrick’s, and this time when they resume walking, there’s space between he and David, a gap that he would have previously described as small but that suddenly feels insurmountably large. “Thank you for the flower, Stevie,” he says and his voice sounds too loud in the air, even as the sound continues to spill out of dim bar doors on either side of the street. “Don’t tell my mother I let a dame buy me flowers? She’d never let me forget it.” 

David makes a little sound, one that could be a laugh or a choke or a sob, but is out of the air before Patrick can begin to pick it apart. Stevie slaps out at him, reaching across Patrick’s body, even though she falls several inches short of making contact with David’s arm. “Don’t you worry, Pat. Your secret is safe with me.”

“Oh, no, we are not doing ‘Pat’,” David says with a scoff, and it brings a rush of heat to Patrick’s face. He blames the cocktails finally settling into his bloodstream, and the thin haze of damp that always seems to hang in the air on a Paris night, but he wants to hear David speak again. About him.

“My girlfriend used to call me Patty.”

“Oh God, that’s worse,” David answers immediately, and Stevie’s laugh is clear and bright in Patrick’s ear. She squeezes his forearm, and he presses his fingers into her hand and remembers how fond he is of people who smile. He sees fewer and fewer of them in his daily life anymore, and it buoys something inside him as they turn up the Rue Geoffroy-Saint-Hilaire and Patrick realizes they’ve made their way to the Jardin de Plantes.

The wall in front of them is a pale cream stone for a few feet before it soars up in a verdant shade of green that makes Patrick think of the hills of home, and his fingers itch to bury themselves in something vibrant and alive. “Girlfriend, huh,” he hears David ask from a step behind them, his hand reaching out and trailing through the green like Patrick only dreams of doing.

Seeing David’s fingers disappearing into the foliage as they walk opens something inside him, springing a lock long since rusted over, and he lets his body do what his body wants to do as his fingers make contact with the cool, silky leaves and his voice finds a way around the words. “Former girlfriend, actually.”

“She leave you for Jody, then,” Stevie says, a deep mock sadness in her voice that rankles something in Patrick.

“No,” he says quickly. “I was the one doing the leaving, actually. I just — things changed in the world, you know?” For once neither of them fire back a response, and while Patrick has no idea what they’re thinking, a cloud of _something_ immediately falls over both their faces. It’s the kind of intrinsic grief, individually unknown but shared across the masses, that provides the tracking beat of their new world. “Anyway. Things in my life were about to look much different than what she signed up for, and I couldn’t do that to her.”

They walk on a bit in silence before Stevie leans her head forward and, across the expanse of Patrick’s chest and the gap between them, says pointedly to David, “See. Not a prick.” David smiles at that, a small smile that starts at one corner and doesn’t stop until it reaches the series of crinkles around his eyes.

“Not a prick,” he repeats before pulling up short and staring across the street, his head darting left and right with a sort of manic fervor. “Shit.”

“What?”

“I think we might have missed it,” David says, his hand over his eyes like he’s blocking out a sun long since set. 

“Where did you say this place was, again?” Stevie’s walking up and down the same stretch of cobbled pavement, craning her neck to see into the darkened doorways between neon signs, Patrick’s hands deep in his pockets as he bounces his weight from foot to foot. 

“You are literally the most impatient person I’ve ever met in my entire life, and that’s saying something because _my sister_ ,” David replies. “What’s the time? Is it ten thirty-two? It has to be ten thirty-two.”

“I have no idea,” Stevie replies, and gives him a stink eye so sharp that Patrick feels it in that sensitive place low in his gut, where all the women in his life have been able to prick him. “I swear David, if you’re relying on Twyla for your information you’re losing your touch.”

“What’s happening, exactly?” Patrick asks.

“Excuse me, it was _Sebastien_ , and you know his information is always good.”

“Sebastien is a creep, a true rag masquerading as a person,” Stevie tells Patrick, no-nonsense. “But, he’s also never wrong,” she adds with a sudden smile, as the lights come on in the darkened windows of the storefront before them, and a man opens the door in full black tie. 

“By day, a respectable dressmaker’s shop,” David says, and he tips his imaginary hat to the man as they’re invited inside. “By night, _not_ a dressmaker’s shop, and nowhere near the vicinity of ‘respectable’.”

*

David’s right. The club is, by its very definition, _not respectable_.

He knew, in theory, that these kinds of places existed. Jazz was jazz was jazz, everywhere it touched the lives of people, but put it in the middle of Paris, where the wine flowed as freely as the Seine and skirts were shorter than anywhere else in the world, and jazz became a different thing, the embodiment of culture and youth and a new world making room for itself.

He hears the wail of trombones and saxophones before they even get to the staircase, and the lower they descend the louder it gets. The wooden staircase doesn’t feel very sturdy under his boots, and he knows he’s following David’s tread a little too closely, but he can’t help himself and he can’t explain why. David’s big shoulders take up all the room in front of him, the entire world, and Patrick lets himself look at the back of his neck where his hair curls just a bit from the humidity, the slick part of his bouffant, the fragile shell of his ears. He smells as good as Patrick expected him to, the rich oaky tone of his cologne, the lavender of his washing powder, the salt of his sweat. 

Unbidden, he has the sudden thought of how David would smell in a different scenario, how he’d look, and he shies away from the thought so suddenly that he almost trips Stevie behind him. Thankfully she’s light on her feet, heels and cocktails aside, and she steadies him with a hand on his shoulder as they go down down down, one flight of steps, two, _three_. 

He says, “Where are we headed to, the center of the earth?” and Stevie starts laughing even as David throws a look over his shoulder that’s nearly his undoing. The coy smirk is one thing, but it’s his eyes, dark and shining with laughter, that soften the joints of Patrick’s knees. “You ready?”

“No,” Patrick says, and David reaches up, plucks the hat off his head, and presses it gently into his chest until Patrick takes it. Their fingers brush and Patrick feels it like a bolt of electricity down the column of his spine.

“Smart man,” he murmurs, and with one last look over Patrick’s shoulder to Stevie, he opens the door.

The wall of sound bombards him.

It isn’t the basement of a building, moldy and damp - this is a full night club, complete with an enormous, curved stage back lit with velvet navy curtains, and a full bar with more liquor bottles than Patrick’s ever seen, packed two-deep on wide glass shelves. Two dozen tables are crammed into the room, along with people, so many men and women that Patrick is immediately overwhelmed. A thick fog of cigarette smoke hangs overhead, haloing the spotlights, the heavy crown molding. They’ve walked in mid-number, and a flush crawls right back up his cheeks at the scantily clad woman singing her heart out on stage, the slit of her dress so high that he can see the band of her nylons, the clips holding them up. She’s dancing with a man wearing nothing but suspenders and a sleeveless white undershirt tucked into skin-tight trousers, and Parick has been in some bawdy places before but he’s never seen anything _quite_ like this.

He’s suddenly sure, as sure as the nose on his face, that he shouldn’t be here. That if he’s _caught_ here he’s going to get more than a talking-to. He’s an MOS 807, special forces trained cryptographer, but if someone reports him for being here it won’t matter if he’s special forces or a gunnery private. His eyes dart to the corners, the places where the shadows pool, and his stomach twists when he sees couples perched at high tables, women draped over women, men with hands pressed to the backs of other men. At several tables, he sees black women and white men, or the opposite, heads bent low together, and Patrick’s skin flushes. These are things he’s read about, that his parents warned him he might encounter abroad, and there’s something about it that’s illicit, that makes his mouth dry and his palms twitch. But his feet continue to carry him forward, to the bottom of the steps and off of the landing and across the River Styx into this underground underworld. 

“If you keep staring, your eyes are going to fall out of your head,” Stevie says, her voice loud in his ear. 

He swallows and his eyes immediately drop. “I’m sorry,” he says.

“Don’t be,” David says over his shoulder as he begins to push through the crowd, his body angled towards a booth in a far corner that’s suspiciously empty given the surrounding press of bodies. “You should have seen this doll here when I first brought her out. You’d have thought the whole world had its knees rouged and it’s garters out.”

“From what I remember of that night, that’s not far off and _I_ wasn’t the one with my garters out.” 

Unbidden, an image of David, thigh wrapped in a garter where it presses against the impeccably stitched inner seam of his suit, flies into Patrick’s mind, and his feet trip over smooth cement floor. He crashes into a table and feels David’s hand wrap around his bicep, pulling him to rights and making a smooth set of apologies at the same time.

“You doing alright, Captain?” David drawls, eyebrow quirked and smile bitten back. It’s a face Patrick is beginning to find familiar already, and he nods so that he has an excuse to break the eye contact David insists on so brazenly. 

It’s a lie, because he isn’t okay. The sequins on the singer’s gown flash under the stage lights, and the room smells like cigarettes and alcohol and danger. He wishes, desperately, that he wasn’t wearing his uniform, not because he’s worried he’s going to get in trouble – though he is, terribly worried – but because he wants to _fit in_ here, in this place. 

Jazz brings out the most beautiful in people, their deepest and most authentic selves, but Patrick has only ever been an observer of that truth.

They get to the table, sit down, but Patrick can’t tear his eyes away from the woman on the stage, the man she’s dancing with. She’s singing about heartache and joy and growth, because that’s the heart of jazz, but he’s never felt it so keenly as he does in this moment.

Patrick is steady, and practical, and has lived his entire life looking for something to satiate the hungry pit of him. And now, for the first time, he’s found it.

It makes him feel reckless. It makes him feel dangerous. And when he meets David’s eyes over the ring-marked table, he thinks maybe that hunger has finally been answered.

David’s eyes dart down to his mouth, for just a second, and a brand new well of heat opens up under Patrick’s ribs. The woman on stage wails, _C'est lui pour moi, moi pour lui dans la vie_ , and Patrick wishes he could live here, right here, forever. He’s never been so scared in all his life, or so excited. This wasn’t what he was expecting when he got his 7-day Liberty pass.

“I just. When I got my pass, I didn’t think — I just wanted to come eat cheese and drink wine,” he says, and watches David’s eyes crease with mirth. 

“Paris _is_ the city for eating cheese and drinking wine,” he says, and a waiter in a black waistcoat and shirtsleeves stops by their table.

“Good evening, Mr. Rose,” he says in heavily accented English. David nods his head and tugs on the cuffs of his own dress shirt, and Patrick catches a glimpse of the dusty silver cuff link — a rose, of course, open in full bloom.

“Good evening, Michel. The usual?”

“Ah,” Michel sucks his teeth, “je suis desole, monsieur, I’m afraid we’re out of the Moët, have been for several weeks now. I have a cabernet franc that’s absolutely _parfait_ as well as several bottles of a riesling that I swear by.”

“Hm,” David runs his hands down the front of his suit jacket. “Where’s the cabernet from?”

“Château Latour,” Michel answers quickly.

“Ugh,” Stevie makes a small sound in the back of her throat, pulling another cigarette out of the silver case. Patrick watches the way she passes it between her fingers, the paper white in the dim light. “The Latour boy is such a creep.”

“That’s true, but his family makes great wine,” David muses. “Patrick? What do you think? Red or white?”

Patrick swallows and shrugs. “We mostly drink beer on base.”

David looks at him and smiles like he’s just admitted to still sleeping with a teddy bear. “In that case — bring us a bottle of each, Michel. Oh, and while you’re at it,” he glances at Patrick with an indulgent smile, “bring us a half — no, a dozen oysters on the half shell and some of that good crusty bread you had the last time I was here? With a big pile of those kalamata olives, feta and manchego cheese. For the table.” He adds the last sentence like it’s almost an afterthought, and Patrick’s never met an adult who makes a meal out of snacks before. “Put it on my sisters tab.”

“ _Oui_ ,” he nods succinctly, spinning to leave, before he turns and seems to hesitate before speaking quickly. “And how is Mademoiselle Alexis? We were expecting to see her earlier this week…”

“She’s had a change in plans,” David covers glibly, looking down at his cuticles until Michel nods again and spins, cutting through the crowd with an efficiency that Patrick admires. 

“Who’s Alexis?”

“My sister. She’s a menace.”

“I’m going to go dance,” Stevie says, pushing herself to a stand as her eyes lock on a woman in the crowd, the fringe of her dress barely grazing the middle of her thigh. She’s looking back at Stevie with a gaze that Patrick recognizes by gut feeling more than by sight. David shrugs his shoulders while Patrick tries to pick apart all the whys and hows of that familiar look between a stranger and a woman who, for all intents and purposes, might as well be. 

“Do you want us to track you down for wine?”

“It’s two bottles, David. You won’t be able to finish before I get back.”

“Is that a challenge?”

“Only if you’d like it to be.”

“...no, not tonight. That doesn’t seem wise. Go, tell Madeline I said hello.”

“You don’t want to tell her yourself?” 

David glares at her until she leaves on a laugh and David crosses his arms, leaning back in his chair and letting his gaze drift over the crowd. Patrick does the same, forcing his breaths to come slow and even through his nose. He feels like he’s barely pressing back a wave of panic, like he’s going to shake apart at the seams. Every sense he has is firing on high, and it makes the world feel too loud again, colors too bright and smells too potent. 

It’s akin to the front line, every instinct he has shouting to keep him safe, and he’s drumming his fingers against the table in a staccato beat that barely matches the music filling the space around him.

He notices David watching his fingers a split second before he stops the movement, his leg picking up a frenetic jiggling instead. David just shakes his head, a fraction of a movement as he reaches into the interior pocket of his suit jacket and pulls out a rose gold cigarette case of his own. He slides out a thin, filter-less cigarette and catches Patrick’s eye as he lights it, taking two shorter, firmer drags before he holds it out to Patrick.

Patrick’s a small town guy, but he’s not a complete square — he knows a jazz cigarette when he sees it. But seeing one and taking one from the broad, steady fingers of a man he’s known less than four hours, in the dark corner of a subterranean jazz club, is an entirely different playing field. He reaches out and takes it, the paper thin where it’s pinched between his fingers. 

He watches it, the smoke an almost steely blue as it curls from the small, hot heart of red. He watches it and thinks of his parents, and his bunker-mate Tommy, and the shape of his life that up until now he’d thought drawn in stone. But that stone had never made space for a world that looked like the one Patrick was now sitting in, and the effort it’s taking him to carve a new life is exhausting him faster than he’d even thought possible.

David clears his throat, and Patrick’s not sure exactly how long he’s been staring, but he knows it’s been too long, so he presses the paper to his lips and inhales twice, forcefully, like David had done, before coughing so hard the sound tears from his lungs like mortar fire. He leans forward, his face so red it’s almost purple, and David is pounding him on the back while laughing so hard, he’s got tears on his cheeks to match Patrick’s. David reaches out and plucks the paper back before Patrick drops it, letting his breathing slow before he takes another drag, longer this time, continuing the inhale even after he pulls the cigarette away from his mouth. He holds it out to Patrick, who has never been one to give up on a challenge. He mimics David again, a long slow drag that continues after he passes the hand-roll back to David. This time, he’s able to keep the smoke trapped in his lungs, to fight the burning and the scratching heat that claws at his throat. He exhales slowly, the smoke snaking out from between his lips in an opaque trail. He notices David’s eyes on his mouth again and wonders what he’s doing wrong this time.

“I’ve never done this before,” he blurts, because he’s the boy his mother raised him to be, brutally honest in all the ways he’s tried so hard to stop being since he stepped into the recruiter’s office in Elmdale. David’s eyes are so dark in the shadow of the club, but somehow also the brightest damn thing in the entire room, and when they meet his Patrick wants to crawl into them and never leave.

“Not many queer jazz clubs where you’re from?” David asks, and he’s laughing even as he pulls from the cigarette. 

“Is that what this is?”

“No,” David says, and leans forward to hand him the roll as he slowly, slowly blows out the smoke. It curls around his cheekbone before slipping up, away, overhead. “And yes. We’re playing by different rules here, Captain Brewer. Everything you think you know doesn’t apply, not here and not now.”

Patrick clears his throat and rolls the quickly shrinking cigarette between his fingertips. It’s damp with saliva and small enough that the heat from the ember presses painfully into the pads of his fingers. He takes another lungful as Michel appears with a large silver bucket, two gold-foil wrapped bottles nestled into a bed of ice. Another waiter has brought the platters of cheese and olives, bread and spreads. Michel deposits the bucket at David’s elbow with a small smile, and David nods and pulls a roll of bills out of his pocket, sliding one palm-down to Michel, who takes it with a small bow and a click of his heels. 

Patrick speaks on the exhale, his eyes glassy and the military precision of his words dulled into something rounder, and softer, and closer to the elongated Canadian accent he grew up surrounded by. “I’m afraid I don’t know what that means, Mr. Rose.”

“David. Mr. Rose is my father.”

“If you insist on Captain Brewer, I’m afraid I’m going to have to insist on Mr. Rose. It’s only polite.”

“Ah, and we wouldn’t want to be impolite when the world is falling into chaos.”

“No, we wouldn’t.” He says it sincerely, earnestly, and David does almost a double take at the sincerely in his voice. David takes the cigarette back and finishes it with one final inhale, stubbing it out in the small metal ashtray on the table, sticking the tips of his fingers in his mouth briefly as his other hand reaches out for one of the bottles of wine.

“Well then. _Patrick._ Which bottle shall we crack into first?”

“I don’t. I mean. Whichever you’d prefer.”

“I prefer both. Which is why I asked you to choose.”

“What’s the difference?”

“You mean other than the fact that one is red and one is white?” There’s laughter in David’s voice again, but laughter that isn’t aimed at Patrick, a skill Patrick is quickly realizing David has honed to an art form, the ability to laugh _near_ someone, adjacent to them, in a close enough vicinity that it pokes, but never cuts. 

“Yes. Outside of that.” Patrick’s tone is stern, frank, and he sounds like his father in his head. But it makes David sit up a little straighter, makes his shoulders turn almost imperceptibly towards Patrick. 

“Hmm. Well, first of all, they’re not _that_ different. Grapes, picked from different places, stomped to juice and barreled until the liquid turns alcoholic.”

“Wait a minute. You’re telling me wine...is an alcohol?” 

David laughs, and Patrick notes the sound, writes the music of it into this soft tissue of his body, feels it in his gut like it belongs there. “Okay, hotshot, we’ll skip the basics.” David pulls the soft cork stopper out of one bottle, pouring a finger's worth into the glasses that have been sitting empty on the table since they arrived. The liquid is such a dark red it looks almost black in the low light of the club, and Patrick almost misses as he reaches to take the glass from David, a fuzziness in his muscles that makes him sigh, his eyes drifting closed for the smallest second.

“Ah,” a burst of oxygen escapes David’s lips, his eyes glued to Patrick’s face. “There it is.”

“There what is?” Patrick peels his eyelids up and feels himself falling into David’s eyes, his body leaning forward until his forearms brace on the table, the fragile stem of the wine glass tapping against the wood. 

David just shakes his head and swirls the wine in his glass. “Swirl the wine, Patrick.”

Patrick follows orders, because he can, and he’s used to it, and he’s good at it. 

There’s a lassitude in his joints that he doesn’t recognize and has never felt before, and the world has gone soft around the edges, the brass notes of the instruments on stage mellowing into something warmer, the smell of cigarette smoke and too many bodies in too small a space less aromatic. The only sharp thing in his world is the cutting edge of David’s smile, and Patrick thinks he would willingly throw himself on it until he bled, if he was even half as brave as he made other people think. 

He _wants_ , deep down in the parts of him that are base and instinctual and uncaring of the rigid rules he lives by. He swirls the wine and lets himself think about what it would be, even if he could never, to take David by the hand and pull him out on the dance floor where dozens of couples in every permutation are dancing their night away. David would let him lead, he thinks, because he’s a rake and a rogue but he contains multitudes, hidden in the shadow of his dark eyes, his self deprecating smile. He’d let Patrick lead, and he’d _like_ it, and Patrick’s skin itches with the thought of what it would be, to feel those wide shoulders under his palm, that big hand in his. The thought comes to him, unbidden and sharp: Patrick letting David lead, and _liking_ it, in the circle of those long arms.

It’s dangerous. It’s so dangerous. He has no idea why he’s thinking these things, or where this pit of want came from, but it’s an ache low in his belly, fisted in every tendon and muscle leading between his legs. He’s never felt like this before, not _ever_ , and certainly not through his courtship with Rachel. The intensity of his arousal terrifies him, for so many reasons, but the _most_ terrifying thing right here and right now is that David is going to walk away from him tonight and not know the gift he gave Patrick without even realizing it. 

Patrick isn’t brave, but maybe he’s brave enough for this. 

He lets himself reach, just a little, across the table, to brush his thumb lightly along David’s pinkie ring. The shock of David’s skin tingles all the way up his skull and behind his ears. He traces the line where cool metal meets the second joint of his finger, then a little, just a little, along the side of his palm. He can’t look up, can’t, can’t, but then David murmurs, low under the pounding brass music, “Take a drink. Tell me if you like it.”

Patrick’s never really liked wine, is the truth, but if David asked him to jump in front of a moving train right now, he thinks he might consider it. The thought makes him smile into his glass, and he takes a sip. 

The flavor of the wine explodes on his tongue, crisp notes of blackberry and plum, with a deep tang of loamy earth. The sharpness of the alcohol tickles the back of his throat, his nose, and when he swallows he feels it curl like smoke down his throat. There’s an after-taste, spicy and light, that makes him want to take another drink. He makes a noise, faint with surprise. “Hey, this is good.”

“Red is delicious, and these days, my preferred wine,” David says, and turns his hand over, slowly, to catch Patrick’s roaming fingers in his own. Patrick wants to jerk back, wants to look around the room to see if anyone is watching, but he feels so _good_ , weightless and warm and daring, and he isn’t thinking about the uniform code at all. He’s thinking about the rasp of David’s hand against his own work-rough skin, about the length of his fingers. David’s hands are huge, and soft as butter. Patrick’s hands are small in comparison because Patrick is smaller than David, and that’s never been a thing he felt before, to be smaller than someone he - someone he - 

“The cigarette was good,” he says, and David’s eyes crinkle up with mirth, his thumb dragging slowly, carefully, along Patrick’s knuckles, along the scar that he split on teeth just a few months ago.

“Liked it, did you.”

“I feel really good. Right now.”

“You keep saying ‘good’, so I’d have to agree,” David says. He leans forward over their hands, so close into Patrick’s space that something instinctual crawls down Patrick’s body. His thighs go loose in a way he’s never felt before, not _ever_ , and they spread of their own volition, just a little, under the table. The arousal that shoots through him makes his nipples tight, the hair stand up on the back of his neck, his belly throb down deep and low. 

He’s never felt like this before in his _life_ , and he’s so embarrassed he straightens up immediately, clears his throat, ignoring the soft little smile curling on David’s mouth. 

David takes pity on him, taking his hand back to cut into the bread on the table between them, and Patrick wants to grab it back, pull it close, into his lap. It’s a sudden yearning, and David - he thinks David _knows that_ because he pushes his lips to the corner of his mouth, some of the impish delight receding from his face, softening his amusement into something warmer and sweeter. “Tell me about yourself. There’s only so much I can guess, though I have guessed a lot.”

“Have you?” Patrick asks, accepting the fork he’s handed and spearing up some of the cheese immediately. It smells like the inside of a sweaty sock and tastes of pure heaven. The bread is just as good, flaky and delicious, and something Patrick expects to find in a cute French bistro, not a sub basement jazz bar in the middle of Paris.

“Have we already forgotten my amazing name trick?”

“That was pretty good,” he says, because it _was,_ and because it makes David wrinkle his nose at the ‘good’. He pops an olive into his mouth. “How did you do that?”

“I’m the kind of man who has a barrage of useless talents only good for showcasing at dinner parties and nights out on the town,” David says, and Patrick can’t help but laugh. 

“I don’t know, guessing my name was a _great_ trick.”

“Ugh. Also, I may have heard the bartender mention something or other,” David says, completely without guile, and Patrick laughs again, rubbing his mouth and looking at David over the top of his fingers.

“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.”

“Oscar Wilde?” David asks, and something settles warm and fond at the heart of him. David is gorgeous, and David is _smart_ , and Patrick should be much more alarmed than he is about what’s settling over him like a blanket. “Really?”

“Seemed appropriate,” Patrick says, and intends it as the double meaning it is. Oscar Wilde would have liked this place, he thinks. Oscar Wilde would have also found the courage to take David’s hand in his and lead him to the dance floor. “Are you a reader of Wilde’s work?”

David’s smile is like sunlight, a little pocket of warm gold in the dark bass of the club. “Are you? Somehow I don’t think they’re passing out armed service editions of _The Importance of Being Earnest_.”

“Excuse me, I’ll have you know that bunburying is a classic military strategy.”

The warmth of his pleasure at making David laugh should not feed all the hungry parts of himself like this, but it does. It does. “Is the Army collectively making their excuses, claiming they’re going to the country to visit their sickly Aunt Maud?”

“Great Aunt Bea,” Patrick corrects, with a sage nod. “Mother’s side. Has terrible arthritis, getting on in years. Needs help with the chickens and goats, you understand.”

“Poor Aunt Bea. You’re good nephews, bringing her cake from Town and helping her fix fence posts.”

“She doesn’t even mind the ballistic canons we park behind her house.”

“Why would she? She’s got strapping boys helping her patch the roof.” David pops the 'p's l on strapping and it's like sparks across Patrick's skin. He hums and repeats David's 'strapping boys', which makes David chuckle as he smears the olive oil spread across another flaky slice of bread. "But. We're not supposed to be talking about Aunt Bea. We're _supposed_ to be talking about you."

"I'm afraid Aunt Bea is a much more interesting discussion," Patrick deflects, taking another long sip of wine, pulling it over his tongue and counting the flavors that he finds.

"Somehow I very much doubt that, Patrick Brewer." David is staring at him like he's seeing something special, like there's more to Patrick than Patrick knows there to be.

"Well," Patrick drains the last of his glass for one last moment to gather his thoughts, and then he launches into the abridged life story he's gotten used to rattling off to the myriad of new people the armed services has shoved him into the company of. "I'm 28. From just outside Toronto. Ontario? It's in –"

"–Canada," David interrupts. "I'm aware of the world map." Patrick blushes but the hard, rounded tip of David's shoe presses gently into his shin bone and he sees a smile playing on David's face. David Rose communicates in gentle barbs, a stem with thorns, and Patrick wants to learn to dance around them. "What do you miss most about home?"

"The space," Patrick says without thinking, because he's thought about it so much already. "Here there are so many people. _Always_. And they're nice people, mostly, in beautiful places, I just. When I was little I used to run for miles in any direction, without seeing a person. I miss that."

It's more words than Patrick's spoken consecutively all night, but David doesn't look bored yet. He tilts his head like he's studying Patrick as he pulls the second bottle of wine out of the bucket. He pulls out the cork and pours a second finger into the other clean glass on the table. It’s thinner than the other, with a squared off stem and almost rough cut base. The dim light in the club bounces off the rim, and the pale yellow liquid inside, as David yet again swirls, sips, and swallows. Patrick watches the line of David’s throat, but doesn’t manage to pull his eyes away before David catches him looking.

“As someone who hasn’t ever fancied themselves a runner, I can’t say I _do_ understand but. Space sounds nice.”

“What about you, then?” It’s Patrick’s turn to swirl the wine around the glass, watching the way the liquid seems to fold over itself as it follows its circular path. He lifts it to his lips and sips, pulling air over his tongue alongside it, and — it is so much different than the red. It’s sharp, and sweet, sweet enough that he feels his lips curling over his teeth. The liquid flows over the back of his tongue and down the column of his throat, and he’s reminded of pears and lemons and fresh-picked summer daisies. There’s almost an acidity to it, like fruit just about to turn, and he darts out the tip of his tongue to chase the flavor, smacking his lips together loudly and sets the glass back down. “What do you miss most about home?”

“I don’t.” David’s staring at Patrick’s fingers where they remain wrapped around the stem of the glass, and he’s twirling a silver ring around the second knuckle of his middle finger.

“Don’t what?”

“Miss home. Not as a habit, that is. So. What do you think?”

“About not missing home?”

David shakes his head slowly and Patrick wants to run the pad of this thumb across the corner of David’s mouth, that little bit where lip meets cheek and David seems to keep all one thousand permutations of a smile he possesses. “About the wine.”

“Oh. I. Um. The red?”

“Are you asking me?” David leans forward and puts his chin in his hand, his elbow resting on the table. 

“The red,” Patrick says, leaning forward and reaching for the bottle, a sudden surge of heat up his spine as his brain screams at him to pull back, to be less brazen, to take a step back from the ledge he’s already balanced on too precariously. He leans back quickly, so quickly that he rocks backwards in his chair and teeters, hand coming to clutch the edge of the table at the same moment that David wraps his hand around Patrick’s bicep and pulls him back upright. 

Patrick smiles, wary, and feels an odd combination of flushing heat and rushing chills as he catches his breath after the sudden adrenaline spike. His hand shakes, the tiniest movement, and he forces himself to breathe through his nose as he tips the bottle and pours a hefty glass for himself. He looks at David, who nods, and Patrick refills his red wine glass, even though there’s still a drink of white he hasn’t finished. 

“The red is a good choice,” David says, clicking his glass against Patrick’s before Patrick picks it off the table. 

“So it’s yours too, then? The red? Your choice?” The words seem to get lost on the way from Patrick’s brain to his mouth, coming out in a different order than they’d started, and he’s not sure if it’s the wine, or the cigarette, the dark press of bodies and music and desire suffusing the air around them. 

He’d like to blame all three, but is pretty sure the culprit already has a name, and a face, and steady hands lifting a thin-stemmed glass to lips more beautifully fit on a face than Patrick can ever remember seeing. 

“I like the red,” David says with a nod. “I like the white, too. I also love a good rosé, or a port. Champagne, of course. Something that’s been sitting in an oak barrel in a dark basement,” he pauses to take a long drink, and the corners of his lips are stained a delicious, dusky pink when he places the glass back onto the table. “Or something newly put away, still piqued and tart and figuring out how it wants to taste.” 

Patrick swallows around a sudden dryness in his throat that the wine is doing nothing to chase away. “So you really just like all wines then.”

“I’m interested in the wine, less so the label, if that makes sense.” David finds Patrick’s eye and holds it, letting the sentence fall into the space, landing on top of the others in such a way that Patrick knew they weren’t strictly talking about the wine anymore.

“I….that makes a certain sort of sense,” Patrick hedges. 

“But, you know, I’ve always admired those who had a more...dedicated palette,” David adds. “There’s nothing wrong with knowing what you like, when what you like is of quality.”

Patrick nods, but is thankfully spared from having to generate a response by an out of breath and slightly sweaty Stevie, crashing back to their table. She snatches David’s glass of white and drains it, then takes Patrick’s and drains that one too, in three long swallows. 

Sweat has dampened the hair around her ears, curled down her collarbones and over her chest. She grins like a mad woman, her lipstick smeared across the corner of her mouth to her cheek, and throws a look over her shoulder capable of murder, sly and smug and so sexual that even Patrick feels it in his belly. The woman standing at the edge of the crowd staring back looks like she’s been taken out at the knees. 

Stevie smirks and reaches across Patrick to pluck her handbag off the table, no doubt to give her mystery woman a chance to see all she’s missed out on. Patrick feels like his entire face is on fire, and he knows for sure that his ears must be bright red, if David’s smile is anything to go by. “Hi,” she chirps, and fluffs her curls up, her earrings sparkling against the black curtain of her hair. “Lets go, boys.”

“But, we still have wine,” David says petulantly. Stevie just laughs and tosses one last look over her shoulder before she gives David a little shrug.

“My work here is done.” She says, draining his glass of red for him and pulling him out of the chair by his wrist. 

“Have fun?” David asks, but Stevie just laughs, like he’s ridiculous for even asking.

The air is cold when they finally spill out of the dressmaker’s shop, but it’s just because they’re so overheated. Patrick hadn’t even realized sweat had gathered under his arms, down the line of his back, until the cool air slipped under the wool. Stevie shivers, full body, and David says, “Every time. Every time! I told you to bring a jacket,” and he shrugs out of his, so annoyed that Patrick can only smile. His waistcoat is an outrageous riot of pattern, black and white gypsophila flowers sewn in startling, beautiful bunches up his chest and shoulders. It’s gorgeous, clearly expensive and impeccably made, and fits him like it was made for him. The gray buttons invite the eye down, down, to the pearled red one at the very bottom, just above the line of his belt. It’s evocative and utterly without guile, much like the man wearing it.

It’s time to say goodnight, Patrick _knows_ that, but something stops him, shutters his tongue. Before, before, maybe he could have walked away with his heart whole and the foundation firm under his feet. Maybe he could have had his R&R and enjoyed the sights of Paris in the fall, eaten cheese and bread and drunk all the wine he could before being sent back to the war, _The War_ , gray and bleak but for the red of blood. He could have written to Rachel - she’s sent him so many letters since he joined. He could have called his parents, and slept as long as he wanted under the fluffy down comforter of his bed at the hostel where he’s staying, and allowed his mind and body to rest for the first time in almost six years. 

He doesn’t want to say goodnight. 

He doesn’t want to walk away from this man, this man who has opened a part of Patrick he didn’t know existed, who had effortlessly and without malice shown him another path forward. He doesn’t want to say goodnight, but he has to. He has to. He’s in uniform, and his obligations lie elsewhere, and the path David is showing him is fraught with peril, for both of them. It doesn’t stop him from wanting it, more strongly than he’s ever wanted anything in his life.

He offers his hand, and David, eyebrows furrowed, takes it. “Thank you both. For tonight.”

“Thank you? Really?” David says, even as he shakes his hand, firm and strong. “Are you going somewhere?”

“Yes.” They’re still shaking hands, and Stevie’s laughing eyes are peaking up out of David’s jacket collar, where she’s wrapped up like a bug in a rug. “Back to my hotel. I can’t thank you enough for tonight. It was more fun than I’ve had in a long time.”

David, Patrick has learned, is a man unable to hide anything on his face, but whatever flashes across his mouth is there and gone again so quickly that he can’t hope to read it. He drops Patrick’s hand and tucks both into his pockets. He should look ridiculous because nothing he’s wearing matches, except that it effortlessly, beautifully, _does_. This beautiful man, who likes red wine and white wine, and who’s been asking Patrick all night to follow him into the dark.

David is offering him a choice, he knows. All he needs to do is reach out and take it. 

The problem is that if he does, David will break him down to all of his component parts, heart and lungs and eyes and mouth, and remake him into a different man. The man who's been waiting, so patiently, to come free of the snarl of a lifetime of bad decisions tempered by duty and sacrifice.

He wants to reach out. He wants to take everything David is offering. He wants it more than he’s ever wanted anything in his life. And that’s how he knows he can’t.

“Thank you,” he says, softly, and has never meant something so much. “Stay safe, both of you.”

“Likewise,” David says, and Patrick feels the steadiness of his gaze on his back all down the street, until he turns the corner and the Parisian night swallows him whole.


	2. Chapter Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Plese forgive us our, we're sure, terrible French. We've relied entirely on Google Translate, and well. We've all seen how that can turn out. Hopefully, the sentiment remains where the grammar may fail us!

The planes wake him up, as they have every day since he got to Paris. David _hates_ them, if only because they serve as a reminder for everything that’s gone wrong since he got the 2 AM phone call from his frantic, terrified sister, begging him for help.

The sheets are rougher than he’d prefer under his cheek, when he turns over on his side to glare at the wall of windows and the stunning view of all the lower arrondissements, with the Eiffel Tower sitting like a perched raven in the center of it all. The jets fly in formation out of Orly Air Base, up into the clouds hanging over Paris thick with rain, and David hates them, too. 

That the _Gaston_ was open for guests at all after the end of German occupation had been a stroke of good luck, but much of the suffering from the last five years still remains in the stained carpets, the forgotten chandeliers allowed to mildew, the bullet holes too high to patch without a ladder that the hotel likely no longer has. He remembers staying here as a little boy, when his mother was playing Sonya in _Crime and Punishment_ at the Théâtre Montparnasse, and the splendor of the _Gaston_ had been like one of the jewels in his mother’s collection, sparkling like a polished diamond.

That even _this_ beautiful hotel had suffered broke his heart, but that was the language of this moment in time: suffering upon suffering upon suffering. There was nothing any of them could do about it except ride it out, and find what little pockets of joy they could.

Like last night.

A shiver rolls down his spine, unasked for and relentless, and which has nothing to do with the cold air of his room. He’s stiff between his legs, as he always is in the mornings, but he can’t attribute it entirely to his body’s normal rhythms. He’s not one to reflect on trysts — there’ve been too many over the years, and too much pain, to allow himself down that road with any kind of frequency — but he can’t help but think back to last night, just a little.

It had been _fun_ , inviting the clean cut, buttoned up boy to drinks in the heart of Le Marais. David had sent him a drink because he’d spent too much of the evening watching him swill cheap whiskey already. The fact that it pulled the other man to him like a magnet was something he hadn’t predicted. It’s not that David wasn’t used to reeling in a joey or two, but. Well. Stevie had warned him before about the dangers of taking in strays, and he’d gone ahead and ordered the man a drink anyway. 

David shifts on the sheets, the slight rub of cotton like fire on the hard length of him, and he flips over to press his hips into the mattress while he picks up the phone to call down for coffee service. The voice on the other end of the line is perky, and sweet, speaking back in rapid-fire French. David asks them to include the few odd requests he always has when ordering coffee, and adds a handful of pastries to the order, trying his best to keep it light, knowing that he was set for an early lunch date with Stevie. But he’s in Paris again for the first time in years, and he can practically taste the delicate folds of croissant and the perfect tang of unsalted butter. Setting the phone down gently in its cradle, he allows himself ten more glorious seconds to sink into the mattress before he fights the intrinsic push of gravity to get to standing. 

The water in the shower is warm, and plentiful, and the sound echoes off the marbled tile around him as he lets his head fall to his chest, lets the water beat tension out of his shoulders. Almost without thought he wraps a hand around himself and closes his eyes, letting his mind wander to dim rooms and smoky corners, the bite of wine and warm, emotive brown eyes like the anodized copper sconces lining his bedroom. A smile like starfire, transforming that warm and modest face into something dazzling, something inconceivable, and he gasps, stroking hard once, twice, startled by the sudden heat in his belly. The tentative terror as he’d reached across the table, _you brave boy_ , to touch his fingertip to David’s ring, the side of his palm. Patrick had been terrified to take more, but the want in his dark brown eyes had almost been David’s undoing. The pleasure crests and he finishes with one palm pressed to the quickly warming tile of the shower, his lip clenched between his teeth though there’s nothing preventing him from making noise if he should choose to. If he can’t help it.

After the shower, David’s routine is almost meditative — Wildwood cream, nail trim, rose oil and a flat bristle brush until his hair is swept up and back, dark and solid and adding a dramatic length to his face that accentuates the rise of his cheekbones. A slap of cold water on the face, the serious consideration on whether he can get by one more day without a shave — he can, he decides, but only one — and as he’s sliding into his dressing gown there’s a gentle knock on his door that means his coffee has arrived.

He pours himself a cup and adds the warm milk and cocoa powder he’s come to cherish as one of his life’s ultimate indulgences. The shortages of war had managed to find even him, in a life built on wealth’s frivolities; he could buy every bauble in Tiffany’s and still not afford to get his hands on an extra sugar ration. He takes a slow sip and it’s still too hot but he smiles a small smile, one just for him, as the caffeine starts to work its way into his system. 

He pulls one of the squat mahogany chairs to the window and sinks into the plush, green velvet pile, watching the world outside his window flowing at its own pace. People walk the streets below, and he can see the gently puttering cars up and down the arrondissements, and he wants to scream at the banality of it all. He doesn’t want to be here. He wants to be in New York. He wants to be back in a dark jazz club, surrounded by noise and people and a million distractions from the suffocating press of irritation that’s filled his bones since he docked a week ago. 

He feels partly like he should blame himself. He’s learned by now that Alexis is a frippert, the kind of duplicitous dandy folks are always accusing him of being. But he’s been taking care of his baby sister since the day she was born, minus the feeding and the changing and the _incessant_ wailing that fell entirely to Adelina. He’d been there when she’d come home brandy drunk and crying over that fool Theodore; he’d held her hand and her hair when she’d fallen on the ice at Rockefeller center and split her forehead wide open; he’d even had the decency to keep her affair with Van Johnson private after he and Alexis stopped seeing each other — and lord knows it’d been hard keeping _that_ one out of their father’s papers. 

So of course he’d come. She’d called him in the middle of the night, his phone line shrieking through the quiet air of his semi-permanent room at the Ritz. He’d practically kicked Jacob out of the bed, he’d started so violently. Lucky for both of them, Jacob was a heavy sleeper, so he went back to snoring while David scrubbed at his face and tried to make sense of the words Alexis was screeching. 

Between the cross-Atlantic connection, her not infrequent sobs, and the fact that she was apparently _also_ carrying on a conversation with someone in the room on her end of the call, it was madness. David heard enough to understand something about Stavros, and a baby, and a woman named Jocelyn, although the exact arrangement of puzzle pieces eluded him. She ended the call begging him to come, invoking some of their most sacred sibling oaths — namely that she’d come to Chicago for him three years ago when his relationship with Sebastien had gone belly-up and public enough that it’d made even his parents embarrassed, or so his father had said in a sparsely worded telegram. And, well. She had. David couldn’t deny that.

So he’d risen, and showered, and had a morning that looked remarkably like this one at a far earlier hour, until the time came to place a call to his father’s man, Robert, and inform him that he’d need a seat on the next commercial flight. Which, Robert slowly explained to him, were still not operational, and no, it wasn’t a matter of calling the right people. Apparently, David’s father had called all the right people just last week in an attempt to escort his mother to some philanthropic fete or another in Monaco. The elder Roses had been out of luck, which left David tied to the options of staying in New York or finding passage on a steamliner. 

And David has always loved the water, never had reason to fear it— but that was Before. Before he found himself in the middle of the Atlantic, ship engines silent beneath him, lights off throughout the entire ship, waiting. The crewman he’d asked was unfailingly polite when he told David they were simply taking safety precautions. David wasn’t ignorant enough to misunderstand, not even willfully – 'safety precautions' meant war, and headlines about U-Boat attacks and sunken passenger vessels floundering into a forever night were suddenly all he could remember reading. So he went back to his suite and laid back down, and squeezed his hands into fists, and felt his heart thundering in every pulse point on his body. He counted to a hundred one time, ten times, fifty times, and he must have fallen into an approximation of sleep at some point because the next thing he knew he was jolting to sit, the motors back to a gentle rumble beneath him and a thin beam of light from the galley hall pooling under his door. 

His chest still feels tight, tighter still with every passing second that he sits in his hotel room, remembering the press of steel walls and rivets and thin, round glass windows looking out on a night that held nothing but the dark, expansive distance of freezing ocean water. David downs the rest of his coffee in a series of rapid gulps, wincing slightly as the still-not-quite-cool liquid burns the back of his throat. He sets the cup down on the silver service tray and proceeds to get dressed for the day. 

In the past David has been accused of approaching clothing like knights approach armor, and in truth it’s not that far off the mark. Anything less than stunning perfection equates to failure, an early lesson drilled into him by his mother and not one soon forgotten. He’s tried, in the years since he last lived under his parents’ roof, but somehow he always stumbles back into these habits, built over a lifetime. His only deviation from the monochrome style he prefers is his riotous use of red, pink, and every hue in between, which his mother hates but which David earnestly adores. Today’s selection is a dovetail gray jacket with a luxurious velvet lapel in white, black slacks, and a shirt in stripes of white and pink, bright against the calm hue of his coat. He pairs it with a pocket square in a shade of the most offensive Parisian pink, and wingtip leather shoes with a gray heel, and feels ever more himself, ever more calm, with every gorget, spaulder, gauntlet and greave.

He’s almost out of the door, key clutched in his fingers, when he stutters to a stop and remembers that he’s supposed to be meeting with Eli after his brunch with Stevie. With a sigh far heavier than it has any right to be, he swaps out his pocket square for a simpler white silk with the subtlest top stitching to add visual texture, and grabs his hat off the seat of the chaise where it’s been for days. It feels stiff and uncomfortable in his hand and David sheds a preemptive tear for the brilliant hairstyle he’s going to have to ruin in a few hours time. 

Twirling the dreaded headwear in his hand, he locks the hotel door behind him and makes his way smartly to the lift, nodding his chin at the few people gathered waiting for the journey down to the lobby. He wishes he’d remembered to grab the daily paper off the coffee service tray, if for no other reason than then he’d have something to do with his hand while he waited, but old habits die hard and David Rose’s was pretending he didn’t care much about what was going on in the wider world. 

He knew that people assumed he was ignorant; of all the assumptions people had about him, it was the one that bothered him among the least. It was the one most deliciously satisfying to prove wrong. That and the fact that the way he chose to dress himself has anything to do with the kind of man he was, or was capable of being. At the thought, he tugs on the hem of his slim-cut waistcoat, runs his hands down the wider velvet lapels on his day jacket. He can just hear his mother now, an excessive number of syllables about the egregious use of velvet as a day fabric, and it makes him smile to himself in that rueful, petulant way he’s never quite managed to give up. 

He’s down the lift and out the lobby with his mind still trailing through the list of reasons Eli may want to meet with him. His father’s phone call had been short, as short as any conversation with Jonathan Rose can be expected to be, and the most David had been able to gather was the day and time of the meeting: Tuesday at 2:30. It was just on 11, so he wasn’t worried about time, but that made for only one less worry on his plate, which was still stuffed to the brim. He’d thought getting to Paris and finding Alexis would make his load lighter, but that was another foolish mistake on his part, another johnny-come-lately step towards a guile that didn’t befit him. Because, of course, that would require getting to Paris and actually _finding_ Alexis, which hadn’t happened. He could close his eyes and see it, the thick cream paper and the gentle slope of her handwriting and the sharp crease down the middle that meant she’d used her nail, followed by the subtle gouge that meant she’d been in a hurry:

_David, if this finds you, you’re a gem for making the effort. Stavros and I have reconciled, and he’s promised me a two-week tour and a single-occupancy sea side villa on the Riviera if we can get past our differences and, well. How do you say no to that?! Toodles, Alexis_

He’d barely managed to give his name to the clerk at the _Gaston_ before the letter was in his hand and his jaw was on the floor. Even now, in the light of the midmorning sun breaking through slowly dissipating clouds, walking down a broad Parisian avenue with his belly full of coffee and jam and the satisfaction of a night well played, he can feel the lick of anger up the back of his throat, the thin fingers that squeeze slightly below his Adam’s apple, not enough to cut off his air but enough to make him intimately aware of each breath his body takes. That night, he’d managed to grimace his apologies and his gratitude to the clerk, choked out enough stilted French to secure a room and then he’d collapsed onto the lush, slightly dusty duvet and stared at the piece of paper until he thought maybe he’d be able to light the thing on fire with his eyes. 

He’d — he’d— his entire life. He’d put his entire life off for his sister _again_. It may not have been a life that looked like one of consequences to a great many people, but he’d had to beg off several gallery reviews and artist interviews he’d had scheduled for the upcoming weeks — and it had been so hard to get Ernest and Jackson to agree to interviews in the first place, the good Lord only knew what rescheduling would be like — as well as several dinners and post-dinner shows with people his mother would have called 'in the know'. They’re the events that are the signposts of his life, and they matter to him. And he’d cancelled or put off or otherwise backed out of so many of them over the years for the better good of his little sister.

No. No, it wasn’t so much that he’d put his life on hold, though he would be feeling the missed opportunities for months to come. She’d called him, tearful and shaking and terrified, and begged him to help her, and David had dropped everything because he was the only family she truly had. To spend weeks traveling to Paris in the middle of a _god damned_ war to save his little sister, only to find that not only was she well, but she’d run off with her disgusting excuse for a beau, was more than David could bear. It wormed its way into every crevice and cavern of his heart, where all the mistreatment he’d suffered at the hands of others lived. 

Alexis hadn’t had the decency to wait for him, to care if he lived or died trying to cross the ocean to her, and for who? A man who mistreated her with far more frequency than David could tolerate, and who had yet again swept her off her feet like the misbegotten cad he was.

David knows enough about himself to realize a simple truth — if he continues to think on it, he’ll work himself into a froth of rage and anxiety, the twin pillars of his current universe. He takes a slow, measured breath, allowing the tightness in his chest to loosen, and squeezes his hands into fists before slowly releasing them. He pushes it from the forefront of his mind, because if he doesn’t he’ll go mad.

He’s not surprised to see Stevie already waiting for him at Le Procope, although he’s a little miffed she’s got several empty profiterole plates stacked up in front of her and apparently didn’t feel it necessary to wait to pop open a bottle of midlist champagne, either. He waves a hand at the maître d' as he breezes past and towards Stevie, sliding his long body into the thin legged chair with a practiced finesse. 

“Thank you _so_ much for waiting.”

“I wasn’t sure you’d actually make it,” she says with a shrug of one shoulder. She’s stunning today, but she’s always stunning, in a dark green day dress and stole that makes the dark gloss of her hair pop and highlights the pallor of her hangover. “You drank enough last night to put fish to shame.”

“Please,” he says with a roll of his eyes, his hand landing on the neck of the champagne bottle and pulling it off the table with far more force than necessary, given how much was left in the bottle. He lifts his eyebrow and shoots her a look and she just meets his eye and drains her champagne glass. Then he sees what might be, but certainly aren’t — “are those raisins?” He physically can’t keep the inquisitive disgust out of his voice. She blushes and puts the glass down. 

“Strawberry shortage,” she says, like that’s any kind of rational explanation. When he’d met Stevie near a decade ago, on his first infamous stay at the _Gaston_ with his mother, she’d been all knees and toothy smiles, the niece of the woman who managed the hotel, and she’d been in and out of the lives of strangers so long she did the dance with grace. She’d made David feel at home with her sharp barbs and tall walls and the way she smiled at him when she thought he wasn’t looking — and had the decency not to say anything when she caught him looking back. They’d spent one fateful summer in a tryst, up and down the Riviera, drunk on the sun during the day and dry gin martinis at night, lips and hands and teeth taking each other apart to the moment where they realized they were about to take a step down a path they couldn’t come back from. And he loved the curve of her waist, and she adored the swoop of his smile and the line of his shoulders, but both of them valued being seen more than they valued doing the seeing. Not that they’d ever have said as much. 

So they’d been inseparable since then. Or, as inseparable as they could be given the press of time, and distance, and a world caught in the ravages of war. He’d made a point to see her any time he’d come to Paris, or within a train’s ride of the city, and she’d looked him up the few times she’d managed to make it to New York over the years, and between that and the occasional letters, or postcard, they’d formed something as close to a best friendship as either of them was ever likely to come. 

“How is it possible I drank twice as much as you did and I’m the one that looks fresh as a daisy this morning,” Stevie says as she plucks the last profiterole off the plate in front of her just in time for a waiter to brush by their table and remove it. David places an order for soft boiled eggs and toast, and two cups of cappuccino to be brought ten minutes apart, and then he glares at Stevie. 

“‘Daisy’ is a bit of a stretch,” he says, more to annoy her than anything, because she looks radiant and she knows it. “How much champagne did you and Madeline drink together?”

The curve of her mouth is positively wicked, and she bats her eyelashes at him. “Not as much wine as you and Captain Honeypot had.”

He’s mortified to feel a flush burn his neck under his jacket, because David – David does not blush. David makes _other people_ blush. “It was mostly red, and it wasn’t even half the bottle.”

“Oh, you’re _defensive_ ,” and he reminds himself he loves her. “This is new, being defensive. You _liked_ him.”

“I honestly have no idea what you’re talking about,” David says, rolling his shoulders back, even if it makes the Cheshire-like smile stretch across her mouth, absolutely unwelcome at this hour of the day. “It was just a laugh.”

“No, ‘just a laugh’ was buying him a drink and doing that flirty, across-the-bar thing you like to do when you’re interested but too scared to speak to someone,” Stevie says mercilessly, and licks the last of the cream off her top lip.

“And Madeline, hmm? Is she just a laugh, or are you going to finally commit to something before you’re both too long in the tooth to be of any use to anyone?”

“The fact that you keep trying to change the subject is not helping your case,” Stevie says, as the waiter returns with the eggs and toast, and the creamiest, most decadent cappuccino to be found this side of the Seine. David’s glad he ordered two, because somehow, he thinks this conversation is only going to be survived with coffee and patience. 

She smirks at him over her own coffee cup.

“What. _What._ ”

“Are you going to see him again?”

Knee-jerk, completely out of his control, the words trip coming off his tongue. “No. Absolutely not.”

He will not be seeing Captain Patrick Brewer again. Not when he’s in this mood, not when he feels this raw and unprotected, not when a glimpse of What Could Be had almost undone him at the seams last night. Patrick… he’d been beautiful, the kind of attractive only found in the truly pastoral places of this world – fresh as newly cut grass, but wild around the edges, connected to the earth in a way David had never been and could never be. He’d been earnest and kind and so, so sweet, unbearably and irresistibly _sweet_ , and David… David was not those things. David was coarse and fickle and spoiled to the core, and if he had nothing else to recommend him, he had the kind of self-awareness to know he would never — could never — subject a man with so much honesty and sincerity in his beautiful brown eyes to the disaster that was David. At the end of that road lay heartache, and there was already far too much of that in this world to invite more.

Stevie sets her cup down, pinning him with a look so frank that he wishes he could cringe under it — _would_ if she wasn’t watching him with that awful patience she had sometimes that made him want to both crawl under a table and never speak to her again. She reaches over and plucks one of the pieces of toast off his plate and takes a dry, crunchy sounding bite, and her eyes don’t leave his face until she finishes chewing and swallows, the pale line of her throat shifting in the bright light of the restaurant. 

She dabs at the corner of her mouth with her napkin and then takes a long, slow drink of water, being careful not to smudge her lipstick. She moves so slowly and deliberately that David can feel himself being pulled towards filling the silence. David comes from a Family of the Loud, and has become accustomed to filing the silence when and where he finds it. When she reaches into her clutch and pulls out a small, round compact mirror, her eyes finally leaving his face, he makes an exasperated noise and huffs his shoulders. 

When she reaches for her tube of lipstick, he groans and rolls his eyes. She’s reaching back out for the toast when he grabs it off his plate and takes a giant bite, glaring at her. She snorts out after an incredibly unfeminine laugh and he puts his hand in front of his mouth as he barks out, “what?!” through a mouthful of toast. 

“How long have I known you, David?”

“A little too long, and unfortunately for us both, a little too biblically.”

She gives him a look and pointedly ignores the second half of his statement. “And in all that time, have you ever been able to lie to me about _anything_?”

“There was that time with the pin curls,” he muses, and she slaps his forearm where it rests on the table. It knocks his fork off his plate and into his water glass and the noise draws eyes from the neighboring tables, which makes them both grin into their napkins. When he looks at her again, she’s doing this thing with her eyebrows that makes her look disgustingly sincere and David wants to ask her to stop, or to put the thin scrap of cloth in front of his face until she gets up and leaves the table because he’s truly being truly ridiculous. But he doesn’t do either of those things, and so there’s really nothing to do but sit and let her speak. 

“You were having fun last night.”

“Yes.”

“You were having fun with _him_ last night.”

“I was...yes.” He says it softly, into the rim of the ceramic demitasse cup, where his first cappuccino is already well past cool. He meets Stevie’s eye and cocks his brow in a silent dare. She gives him a little nod, and plucks his fallen fork off the tablecloth, using it to spear the last bite of his egg and jam it into her mouth before he can say anything. He just stares at her, his mouth agape, small smile at the corner of his mouth. He hates her, but he loves her, and telling her either won’t do him any good. 

The waiter slides a second ceramic cup onto the table and winks at him, which David almost misses with the way Stevie’s started twirling her napkin in her fingers. Almost. “I haven’t seen you like that in a long time. Not since Sebastien.”

“Patrick isn’t Sebastien,” David says, immediately, almost reflexive and pulled out of him by the force of his disgust.

“Oh?”

“Sebastien Raine has no regard for people who aren’t Sebastien Raine.” 

“And Patrick is different.”

“ _Yes_.”

She sits back in her chair, regarding him silently. “How?”

“What do you mean, ‘how’?” He feels as if she’s leading him to a place he doesn’t want to be, but he’s long since accepted he’s not nearly smart enough to figure out where that is. “I have no idea. We only spoke for a few hours.”

“Four.”

“What?”

“Four hours. He was with us last night for four hours.”

Surely it hadn’t been - the night had gone by so fast. “It wasn’t four hours.”

“Almost five, actually,” Stevie replies, because she truly is the bull in the china shop of his feelings. “You chatted the night away with a beautiful boy in uniform, and you didn’t even take him home afterward.”

Heat builds under his collar. “He was the one who said goodnight.”

“And you didn’t want him to.”

No. No, he hadn’t. He’d wanted to take Patrick by the hand and pull him in against his side, wanted to show him all that Paris at night could offer. Any excuse, to keep listening to his soft voice. “He made his intentions clear.”

“Did he?”

“Alright,” and he tosses his napkin on the table, standing and pulling out his bill fold. “I’m leaving. Warmest regards.”

Her dark eyes are laughing at him, even as she pulls his unfinished coffee towards herself. “Best wishes,” she says, and takes a long sip. 

He makes it all the way outside before the temptation is too strong and he looks through the giant plate windows and finds her, staring at him and shaking her head ever so slightly, knowing smile tucked away behind a full flute of champagne.

*

As much as he loves Parisian nights, the scent of the salty brine of the Seine, the wine, the cobblestone streets undisturbed by the passage of time, David _hates_ Paris during the daytime. The German occupation still exists like a footprint in soot over the city, and as he travels by taxi to the 6th arrondissement he’s reminded far too much of the last time he was here, when he and everyone he knew had fled the city after the Germans won the Battle of Sedan. 

It’s hard to believe, looking out at the roiling, writhing mass of _life_ , the crunch of too many cars and too many people, the blare of horns and the hustle of busses, that just a few short years ago the city was being bombed. It’s _teeming_ with people, ladies pushing prams and men rushing with their briefcases, school children walking home with their satchels and newsstands on every corner. It’s all the things David hates about New York City, but somehow made worse because it’s an afront to the beauty of Paris to be so fucking _metropolitan_. Or maybe it’s because yet again, he’s being expected to alter his plans due to family obligation.

Saint-Germain-des-Prés is arguably the most expensive area of Paris, so it’s no great surprise that this is where Eli has bedded down for the winter. His offices are a splendor, deep leather sofas and white curtains, thick rugs underfoot and fine bone china for tea, and so far removed from the rebuilding efforts of Paris that David feels a bit as if he’s passed into another world. The building is blessedly warm, as if Eli had never heard of a coal ration card, and he had spared no expense in warming his offices to just near tropical as if to say _the pettiness of your life shall not touch mine_. David wishes, as he comes into Eli’s office and sweeps his hat off his head, that he could bottle this warmth and take it back with him to the Gaston.

“So, David,” Eli says, once pleasantries have been doled out and brandy brought in. “You’re looking well, my boy.”

“Likewise,” David says, though it’s a falsehood — Eli was never the bastion of good health, but if possible he looks even worse now, hair thinned and eyes bruised deep in their sockets. He looks old, and tired, and not the vital man David had grown up calling _Uncle_. Time came to all men, but it had come doubly for Eli. “And Aunt Marlain?”

“Visiting her sister in Toulouse, though she extends her regards.”

Marlain hated David, so he sincerely doubted it. The feeling was mutual, because she was the kind of woman who hurled scathing insults for sport and had ruined his bar mitzvah by collapsing with the vapors, code for ‘got so drunk she literally fell out of her heels’. While David arguably found both those things hilarious, her words had a way of cutting through to the heart of him that he’d not appreciated as a youngster, and wouldn’t tolerate as a man grown. It was best for all parties involved that she wasn’t here.

“So, to what do I owe the pleasure, Eli?” David swallows around the word ‘pleasure’ like it’s a dry pill. “My father was vague on the phone.”

“Oh, I can’t say I’m surprised to hear that. You know our Johnny.” David cringed at the familiar _our Johnny_ but did his best to keep the expression small. He grimaced at Eli and nodded and hoped that would be enough. “I’m glad you were able to get away for a minute, David, your father mentioned you wouldn’t be staying long.”

“Two weeks, I’m afraid. The fastest I could get a turn around back to New York, what with everything.” 

“You dad didn’t mention what’s brought you halfway around the world to begin with.” Eli sits on the opposite side of a wide oak desk littered with paper and detritus and a very uncomfortably staged family portrait. He leans back and unbuttons the top button of his waistcoat and reaches for a small cigar box on the small end table behind him. He holds it out to David, who defers, before plucking one out, slicing the tip, and lighting it with the pop of a match. David watches, and waits, because. Well. He’s not surprised his father didn’t say anything, but he’s also not in the mood to dig out the skeletons in his family’s closet, not even the most recent ones. 

Eli exhales a thick grey cloud of smoke and David coughs, breaking the silence that’s stretched between them. “Just. In on family business, I’m afraid.”

“Ah. Can I assume this has something to do with the rather frantic phone call I received from your sister at the beginning of the month.” David shrugs and squeezes the brim of his hat in his hand.

“I haven’t actually had the privilege of speaking to my sister about that? So I can’t say for certain.”

“Okay, David.” He taps the side of his nose and winks as he says it and David smiles wanly. He’s grateful for the out, but not necessarily interested in going any further down this chummy path with Eli. He can’t manage it on the best day, and today most certainly isn’t that. He knows he’s just sat down, and should probably suffer through at least a splash of brandy, but he’s not feeling up for even that bare minimum, so he sits up straighter and claps his hands together in his lap.

“Well, Eli —” 

“What do you know about Paul Graupe?” Eli asks the question so casually it takes David a second to hear him speaking over the words halfway out of his mouth. 

“Graupe? The art dealer?” Eli nods and ashes his cigar. There’s a predatory sheen to his light eyes that makes David shift in his seat and study his cuticles for a breath, reminded yet again of just why it was his father trusted this man with his business. He doesn’t quite know why Eli is bringing this up, but in his experience anything of interest to Eli either has to do with money or fame or both. He has a moment of panic, mentally rolling back over the last year to determine if he’d insulted Graupe or one of his compatriots, as it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that his father had sent him here for Eli to chastise when he couldn’t do it himself. “Most likely not much more than everyone else knows, I’m afraid. Brilliant art dealer.” 

David knows Eli’s politics, so he doesn’t add that he’s fully aware that many brilliant art dealers were selling classical paintings pillaged by the Nazis to private collectors for a tidy profit. David wasn’t deep enough in the game to be invited to the truly illicit underground trades, though he’d heard talk. Rembrandts being sold like they were seaside landscape paintings and Van Gogh’s traded like baseball cards, as if the entire western canon didn’t rest on the shoulders of these brilliant pieces of art. Their loss was extreme, and that anyone in his field would stoop to such a level made him sick.

“Yes, quite brilliant,” Eli says. “It seems he’s had a fair bit of bad luck, Stateside.” That seemed like a particularly choice turn of phrase, given _why_ Graupe had faced the trouble he had, but David didn’t say anything, curious about just how much rope he could uncoil for Eli to hang himself with. “And he’s back in France.”

“Good for him,” David says, and he means it. 

“Good for him, good for us,” Eli said, and David’s shoulders brace for the dropping of the first shoe. “As you know, I’ve been keeping a bit more of an eye on the art world since you’ve taken such a _vested interest_.” Eli means since he started spending money on art, investing in pieces and actively collecting, beyond reviewing for his father’s paper. “And I’ve been hearing little whispers of a deal that our good friend Mr. Graupe has passed up that might be quite the potential opportunity for the Rose family.”

David’s skin runs cold, and he’s reminded of who the man sitting before him is. The dealings Eli has had in his father’s stead, the palms he’s greased when Alexis was in trouble, when Mom was in the closet again because her play got a bad review. The way trouble never seemed to touch David personally, not even when he was being photographed coming out of the Duke of Wellington’s rooms. The people who have conveniently been removed from the upward path trajectory of the Rose Family, as if they never were.

He isn’t stupid. He’s sitting in front of a very quiet, unassuming, fastidious little man, and Eli may very well be the most dangerous man he’s ever met. 

“What — what kind of deal?” He clears his voice and forces as much solidity as he can muster into the words. The corner of Eli’s mouth crooks like he’s got David on the end of a fishing line and David stays stone still in his seat, unwilling to give Eli the satisfaction of seeing him squirm.

“How many gallery owners would you say you know in New York?”

“Um. A dozen, probably, that still have open galleries right now,” David says slowly, wary of the sudden change of subject. Eli just nods.

“And how many of those owners have enough to buy...big. We’re talking true masterpieces.”

David shrugs. “A third of those. Maybe. Depending on what kind of masterpiece we’re talking about. Provenance is everything,” David says the last bit with a wry quirk of his mouth that he hopes covers the loathing creeping in at the edges of his voice. He knows _exactly_ what kind of deal Graupe would’ve been offered, and turned down, and David’s leg starts to jiggle with the intensity with which he wants to escape this room. But he does his best to smile at Eli, as easy and carefree as he ever is. 

“Indeed it is,” and there’s a shift in his face that’s there and gone before David can read it. Eli stubs out his cigar and sets it against the rim of the ashtray, and stands up, checking the thick silver watch cuffed around his wrist. “Time for a drink, David? A little hair of the dog, as they say” He chuckles at his own joke that’s not a joke, and David lets out a few stilted, choked off laugh sounds. 

“If you’re buying, Eli, count me in.” The glass Eli hands him is heavy, far heavier than David would have poured for a pre-dinner cocktail, and he was the man who’d chased a late night with an alcohol brunch. He takes a long sip and lets out a slow sigh as the peaty, smoky brandy flows down his throat. Eli has never met a situation in the world that his money couldn’t ply, and apparently that applied to alcohol as well as it did to problem solving for the various Roses. “One question though, Eli.”

Eli nods, his eyes on the calendar on his desk, his glass pinched between his sallow fingers.

“Why come to me? Surely a deal this good needs to go straight to my father.” David is trying, he’s pulling on the only puppet strings he’s got left, because there is a sour feeling in his stomach more bitter and bilious than anything he’s _ever_ felt. Not the night he’d been stranded in Montmartre with no money and no pants, not the night he’d walked into his family home to find his mother, passed out on the stairs and he hadn’t been able to wake her for a universe of minutes; not even that night on the ocean, surrounded by dark and damp and the threat of death. There is a taint to everything Eli has said to him since he walked into this office, and he rubs his fingers against the twill of his pants like he can feel the blood on his hands. 

“Oh, come now David,” Eli swirls the brandy in his glass and looks at David with his piercingly blue eyes, winking. “We both know where the real brains in the Rose family are. Besides, your father doesn’t have your...eye. When it comes to art.” 

David smiles and runs his finger around the rim of his glass before he raises it to his lips and takes what could only be described as a gulp. The glass is half gone when he leans forward to rest it on Eli’s desk, reaching into his breast pocket and pulling out his cigarette case. He takes a squat, hand-rolled cigarette, the last of his favorite London tobacco, and lights it with the heavy silver lighter sitting on the corner of Eli’s desk. He takes a drag and nods, asking after Eli’s children in a polite and completely generic fashion — mostly because he doesn’t care, and also because he can’t actually remember the names of Eli’s children. 

He lets his body relax into the chair as he feels a leaded liquidity fill his muscles. He drank too much, too fast, and it’s made him feel loose and uncoordinated. He focuses on the way his fingers pinch around the homemade filter in his cigarette, the way the glass in his hand is smooth under his palm. Eli prattles on from one subject to another with very little input from David, and it gives him the chance to think, and drink, and try and work out a way to stop whatever it is that Eli is about to start.

David has been lucky enough to spend most of the last half a decade in the States, in the buzzing metropolis of New York City, in a world where he doesn’t have to hide any part of himself, shielded by wealth and the gilded lily of society. While around all of them, the world fell apart. There wasn’t a person David knew who didn’t know someone who’d lost someone to the War, to the camps, to the overwhelming power of hatred and violence suffusing every part of the world. The Roses had counted themselves amongst the lucky, and gone relatively out of their way to put it out of their minds, except for when they couldn’t. There was a guilt to that, a growing scratch at the back of David’s throat, that had only been getting worse over the last several years. At this exact moment, he thinks he might just choke on it. 

He finishes his drink and sets the glass down with a heavy thunk on the low wood table next to him. Eli is leaning back in his chair, his heels up on the corner of his desk as he nurses his own drink, now well on its way to gone, as he looks out a far window. The later afternoon light outside has resumed a sort of grey pallor, and David hopes it’s not raining again, because he doesn’t have an umbrella and he’s far too drunk to run, if running was in his arsenal of potential choices. Which it never, ever was. 

“Well, Eli, it’s been a time, truly,” he says, making sure to speak slowly enough to enunciate his words, bracing his hands against as he stands, reaching out to steady himself as he grabs his hat off the table and slips it on to his head. He reaches out for Eli’s hand, and manages to land his palm in Eli’s on the first try. He squeezes back just tightly enough to pass muster with a man like Eli. “Give my regards to my father the next time you speak to him.”

“Surely you’ll be doing that before I will.”

“Oh, I think we both know how likely that is, Eli.” David wishes he could take the words and jam them back down his throat, doubly so when Eli’s eyebrow quirks. Eli is the exact kind of man who doesn’t need to know more secrets than are strictly necessary, and while the strained relationship between him and his parents isn’t exactly a _secret_ , it’s certainly not something he wants to be discussing with Eli. Especially when, apparently, he’s far more liquored up than he had any intention of being this afternoon.

“Well. In that case, David, I’ll pass along your best wishes.” David tries to pull his hand out of Eli’s when he finds it caught fast, pressed in the grip of Eli’s clammy fingers. Eli is still smiling, but there’s a sharp edge to it that makes David pull back on instinct. “If you do happen to speak to him first, though, maybe. Let’s just keep this meeting between us, hmm? Until I have a more solid plan in place, I’d hate to bother him during your mother’s award season.”

“Of course,” David says, his voice whisper-thin and moth-eaten. He nods, and finally slides his hand free of Eli’s. He dips his chin and makes his way out of Eli’s office, not giving in to the temptation to look back as the heavy oak door swings closed behind him. 

The low heels of his wingtips barely make contact with the pavement outside when a peal of thunder rumbles overhead and the skies of Paris decide that they don’t give one single, solitary shit for the kind of day David has had or would like to have in the future. They open and piss lukewarm all over his daysuit. He ducks under the nearest awning and waits, but the rain only grows heavier and his shivers grow harder. 

He’s going to have to go out in the downpour, there isn’t a way around it. He thinks forlornly of the beautiful but drafty room at the Gaston, and of the warm press of bodies in last night’s bar, and makes a decision before he can fully finish processing what he needs. 

*

David owns what some people consider to be an exorbitant amount of clothing. He has all manner of dress for all manner of occasions, because anything less than appropriate attire when the occasion calls for it is simply incorrect. He has his day suits and his evening suits, and casual cotton attire for his jaunts south, though those trips had dried up quickly with the onset of the war. He has hundreds of pairs of shoes, in their own dedicated space in his loft in Manhattan, a half dozen hats for when needs must (as his current hairstyle does not suit a hat), and twenty of the finest watches in the world. His bill folio always matches his shoes and belt, and his collection of pocket squares is second to none, in the finest silks and embroidery that money could buy. 

When he’d packed for this trip he’d had no idea what to expect, only that it would be likely he’d be in Paris for at least a fortnight, if not more. He’d packed for casual lunches and black-tie affairs and everything in between, with no clear picture of what he’d find when he got to Paris to rescue his little sister. Fear had guided him to prepare for any eventualities, even if those eventualities ended up requiring four trunks, but David was nothing if not constantly prepared.

He’d thrown it into his trunks as an afterthought, like the sweet citrus bubbles of champagne after the first swallow. It was arguably the best suit he owned, though not because it had cost a fortune (though it had), or because it was particularly well made (it was). The suit was the finest thing he owned because he’d had it made in a tiny Italian shop by a tiny Italian man who had to have been at least ninety years old. He’d been too old to drop to his knees to measure inseams and all that nonsense, ordering his great grandson about and snapping at him in rapid-fire Italian if the boy didn’t measure to his specifications. 

David had gone into the shop on a whim, and when he’d walked back out he’d been the proud owner of The Suit.

The Suit was a gray so deep it could be mistaken for black, with the finest gray threadwork running through every seam, meant to accentuate and enhance the olive tones of his complexion. It fit him better than his own skin did, accentuating the breadth of his shoulders, the length of his legs. It was a slim cut, much slimmer than current fashion permitted, but David looked like sex incarnate in it, so what did current fashion matter in light of that? 

He doesn’t know why he packed it, and he doesn’t know why he puts it on now, or why slipping into the finely pressed slacks, the crisp shirt, the jacket, feels so good. He isn’t going anywhere interesting, or special, after all – just downstairs to dinner. Stevie would be seeing Madeline tonight, so he was alone, and… and he supposed it was alright, to look nice for dinner, to make himself feel good for his own sake. 

He nods at his reflection, straightening his soft gray pocket square. “Alright,” he says, and winks at himself.

He takes up his long black evening coat, before locking his door behind him. It’s just should he decide to step out for coffee afterward. He may want to nip by the newsstand for the evening edition. He may want to take in the fresh night air, relieved of engine exhaust.

His elevator opens. The _Gaston’s_ restaurant, _Avant-goût_ , is renowned throughout Paris for the crème brulee, the brioche. That sounds delicious, he decides — or rather his stomach decides for him. Thick, crusty bread, some fine cheeses, maybe a soup.

The hotel serviceman opens the restaurant door for him, a “Good evening, Mr. Rose,” on his lips. Couples in beautiful gowns and silk suits are coming in for the evening meal, and he’s hungry, very much so, but as he sways to a stop there in the middle of the lobby, he realizes there’s another, deeper hunger he has to satiate first.

“I won’t be dining in tonight, Jean, thank you,” he says, and turns for the doors to the hotel.

He’s tried to keep Patrick out of his mind today, the sting of the rejection like the bite of alcohol on an open cut. He’d had time to worry about it during the miserable, rainy afternoon, tongue dipping into the sore wound, and has come to the unfair conclusion that this won’t heal nearly as well or as completely until he sees Patrick again. Speaks to him again. If only to say ‘goodbye’ properly.

That was it. That was it exactly. One last look, one last conversation, and then David could eat and go to sleep in peace, his own hand and the wistfulness of a missed opportunity for company. 

The bar, the _Salome_ , had with the liberation of Paris become a GI bar. David wasn’t blind to them, after all – in New York City he’d lived down the road from one. Young men looking to feed the hungry pits of themselves with pretty girls and the illicit kind of fun that came when you wore a uniform and had money to spend. David hadn’t precisely gone to the _Salome_ looking for that kind of entertainment, but the music had always been very good and they kept his favorite ’32 Cabernet Sauvignon behind the bar. It was an ideal spot to people-watch and drink good wine and listen to above-average jazz, not necessarily in that order. 

He can hear the music before he even turns down the alleyway where the _Salome_ lived. A young woman in a gorgeous pink frock and coat is tugging a GI behind her, eyes bright with mirth, because his hat is askew and he’s got red lipstick staining the collar of his drab olives. Three more men in uniform are spilling from a cab, laughing so loudly that the sound echoes up the column of brick, and tripping over each other going into the bar.

God, he loves the _Salome_. They’re playing a number much livelier than the norm, a wall of brass and drums and the beautiful, wailing voice of the singer. The tables are all full and the bar counter nearly so, cigarette smoke hanging just overhead and softening the glare of the golden sconces, the brightness of their light. He scans the crowd, looking for those cheekbones that had so captivated him, the short hair almost red under the low light of the bar. 

_Maybe he’s not here. Maybe he didn’t want a chance encounter with you again_ , says the nasty little voice in his head, which sounds a lot like Sebastien these days. He _hates_ the voice because it’s not usually wrong, not when it comes to the matters of the heart, and David – David has been so hurt before.

This was a mistake. He’s made a mistake. He’s made the kind of mistake that means he needs to leave immediately, and as he shoves his hands into the pockets of his overcoat and turns on his heel, he hears his name cut through the noise like the ringing of a bell.

It’s too late. Patrick’s sitting at the same table he’d been sitting at last night, two-thirds of the way to the front and pressed so far to the side he’s practically in one of the booths lining the walls of the club. It’s not the best place to see or hear the music, but it’s the perfect place to slip in between the shadows, to see without being seen. And he’s looking at David like he’s seen a ghost. Or a miracle. He lifts a hand in a wave at David, and David takes a deep breath and dips his chin and begins to weave his way through the tables and towards where Patrick’s sitting.

“Hi,” David says quietly, standing behind the second chair at Patrick’s table, one hand resting on the back of the chair, and he can’t get his eyes to stop roving over Patrick’s face, at the subtle line of stubble that gives him the slightest cut of jaw. There are bags under his eyes that weren’t there yesterday, and David folds his thumbs into his fist so that he doesn’t give in to the urge to reach out and trace them away. Patrick’s got one hand wrapped around the stout body of a beer bottle, and he brings the bottle to his mouth before he says anything, his lips making a perfect, pink “o” as he wraps them around the opening of the bottle and takes a long, slow drink.

The bottle makes a gentle ‘thunk’ as Patrick sets it back down and David feels his stomach flip as the Adam’s apple in Patrick’s throat dips when he swallows. 

“Hi,” Patrick says, staring at his mouth.

_Not so innocent, then,_ David can’t help but think, pure amusement ticking at the corners of his mouth, in the hollow of his sternum where he wants to burst into laughter as relief cascades through him. It’s the kind of move he’d have pulled ten years ago, the first time he looked at a man and thought _what if,_ clumsy and almost sweet and funny and perfect, perfect, _perfect._

The ball of tension he’s been carrying low in his belly loosens its fingers, and he lets himself look – at Patrick’s beautiful face, at the line of his shoulders, at the perfect shell of his ear and the dip of his chin. It’s brazen and uncouth and a blush travels over the planes of Patrick’s cheekbones, up his ears. David smiles despite himself because maybe he made the right decision coming here, after all.

“Beer? Really? Of all the alcohol available in what is arguably the wettest city in the world, and you chose a stout? From a _bottle_? My god.”

“Maybe I like beer,” Patrick says, and pushes out the second chair with his foot.

“It tastes like it was filtered through a dirty sock and then boiled in with the potato water, and is therefore incorrect,” David says, making a face as he unbuttons his overcoat and slips it from his shoulders. 

“Considering gin tastes like battery acid dug out of the bark of a Christmas tree, I’m not sure you have a lot of room to be talking.”

“You seemed to choke it down last night.”

“Hm,” the corners of Patrick’s mouth fold up and David drapes his overcoat over the back of the chair, smoothing his hands over the black wool, before standing up to his full height and looking over his shoulder at the bar tender. He feels Patrick looking, and he can’t help but let his chest inflate, his shoulders back and the line of his neck on display as he nods his chin at Raphael, who sees him and nods in assent, reaching above him for the top shelf rye. 

David is the vainest creature to walk this earth, but he would never ask for the compliment that he so badly wants, not from a man as sensible as Patrick. In moments like these he doesn’t need affirmation of Patrick’s interest, though, because for all that David likes verbal confirmation that he looks amazing, sometimes body language is just as good. And currently, Patrick’s body language is reciting a boudoir novel.

Patrick hides his mouth behind the neck of his bottle, but David can feel the tension in him, even as Patrick sprawls just a little lower in his seat, even as he takes a long drink. It’s seconds, only, before David unbuttons his jacket and sits down, but it’s enough. It’s more than enough, to know exactly where he stands, and exactly what went through Patrick’s mind. What’s going through Patrick’s mind. 

Interest reciprocated.

“I wasn’t sure I’d see you here again,” David says, because Patrick isn’t going to speak up, not right now, not when there’s so much vulnerability along the seam of his mouth, his shoulders. 

“Oh?”

“Lots of GI bars in Paris. Lots of beautiful people.”

Patrick’s eyes dart to him, disbelief in all that dreamy, rich brown. He studies David’s face for endless moments and David can’t help the way his lips twitch up, even as he bites at the corner of his mouth to keep the laugh behind his teeth. It’s enough — the tension flows out of Patrick’s body, and he turns ever-so-slightly to face him. They’re not on the same page of music just yet, but at least they’re in the same book now.

“You hang out at GI bars often?”

“Since last night, I do.”

“Interesting clientele,” Patrick says, without looking away from him. David’s always had a hard time holding people’s gazes, but he thinks he could easily sink into Patrick’s eyes and never swim free. “Decent music.”

Raphael comes by the table with David’s drink, a Vieux Carre on ice, light on the vermouth. He takes a slow drink, savoring the burn of the rye on the edges of his tongue, the smoky flavor and the brightness of the cherry chasing it down his throat. He savors it because it’s a good drink, but also because it makes Patrick look at him just like _that_. “Would you like a taste?”

Patrick’s eyes drop down to his mouth and David feels a surge of heat rocket down his chest to settle in the cradle of his hips. He suddenly recognizes the feeling that has dogged his steps all day, the unsettled restlessness of his body suddenly explained. He hasn’t felt this in so long, not this quickly, not this strongly. 

He blinks back to himself, but Patrick has already looked away, down, to his own beer bottle. “I write music. As a hobby. I even played some for Rachel, once. I like what they play here.”

“Oh?” David says with a quirk of his eyebrow. “And how’d that go.”

“She seemed to enjoy it.” Patrick picks up his bottle and tilts his chin until it points at the ceiling, draining it dry. “Wouldn’t you?”

“Oh, yes, absolutely,” David lets the sarcasm drip from his voice like syrup over pancakes. “I can’t think of anything I’d rather have happen than to sit across from the person I fancied and have them serenade me.” David says ‘serenade’ like he’s talking about something criminal, and Patrick lets out a low chuckle alongside the roll in his eyes. 

He picks at a loose corner of the bottle label. “I don’t know, David Rose. You might even like it, if you got the chance to try it.” Patrick meets David’s eyes and his cheeks are a ruddy pink in the golden light of the bar, but there’s a defiant, knowing twist to his mouth that David wants to lean in and claim like Sunday supper. He’s tempted to open his mouth and tell Patrick that he has tried it, or the equivalent of. That he’s let lovers of all stripes give him grand gestures, and grander gifts, and occasionally they’re even ones that he isn’t bankrolling by default. But he raises the glass to his mouth again instead and lets the truth lie, keeps the box locked. He’s slowly learning to speak Patrick, and he knows whatever experiences he’s had, they’re of a different ilk than whatever it is Patrick’s talking about. 

“Another round,” David asks as he swallows.

Patrick pushes the bottle out of his reach, fidgety, and does a little wave in David’s direction. “Not on an empty stomach.”

It’s the kind of brush off David has heard before, has made before, one that says _‘please’_ as much as it says _‘really, I shouldn’t_ ’. David nods. “That’s very practical.”

“Well. I wasn’t practical last night, and I’m afraid I spent the better part of today in bed because of it.”

David coughs a little at the mental idea of Captain Brewer, laid out and in pain, his long body wrapped in — what? The same crisp cotton undershirt he’d spent all day wrapped in? A wide-legged cotton trouser with a matching sleep button-down, maybe something in a gray to rival the pocket square in David’s suitcoat? Nothing at all? Patrick has to clear his throat to pull David out of the mental catalog of possibilities where Patrick’s sleepwear is concerned. “I’m very sorry to hear that,” David supplies quickly. “You’ll just have to make sure to plan better this evening.”

“Hm. I will, will I?”

“I can only assume a Captain in the Canadian Armed Forces is more than aware of all the ways to prevent something as...amateur as a hangover after a single night out on the town.”

“What makes you think last night out was a single night?” It’s Patrick’s turn to raise an eyebrow and — oh. David distinctly doesn’t like the sour taste that floods his mouth when Patrick implies a hidden history of nights on the town without David. And, as his father would say, David hadn’t just fallen off the turnip truck yesterday. Of course Patrick’s had an entire life of nights without him. Patrick was young and devastatingly handsome in a wholesome, salt-of-the-earth sort of way, a decorated soldier if the ribbons on his chest were anything to go by, and painfully earnest and sincere. He had money in his pocket and no ring on his finger. All ingredients combined served to make him a most eligible bachelor, and he could have his pick of any of the women, and half of the men, sitting in this bar right now.

Something of the uncertainty he feels must show on his face, because Patrick smiles and says, “Kidding. I’m kidding.”

“So you don’t go out every night?”

“Oh no, I do,” and ugh, ugh, “but never with quite as good a company as yours.”

David bites the inside of his cheek, because he doesn’t know how to pick apart the myriad of emotions that just tripped over themselves to wrap around his heart. “Oh.”

“For example, I really value your scintillating conversation.”

Patrick is _laughing at him_. “Excuse _me_ for being surprised.”

“I’m not as innocent as I look, David.”

The way his name rolls off that small pink tongue. “You’re absolutely as innocent as you look,” David says, turning his glass in the puddle of condensation on the table. “Like a lamb in the woods.”

“I’m _twenty-eight_.”

“Doesn’t make it less true. For example, are you aware that the dame behind me and to the left, the one who’s wearing the mink stole, has been inviting you to look between her legs for the past fifteen minutes?”

Patrick’s eyes dart over his shoulder and David watches, delighted, as his mouth drops open. Whatever he must see is too much, as French women are nothing if not bold, and Patrick averts his gaze upwards, blushing so fiercely his skin goes almost purple. David can’t help but laugh. “Oh my God,” Patrick mumbles, and David pushes his glass across the table. “She just. She.”

“How old? Were you again?”

“Shut up.”

“Because you just — didn’t you just tell me you were _twenty-eight_?”

“Alright,” Patrick says, and tosses David’s drink back in one blow. His eyes tear up fiercely, but he doesn’t explode in a fit of coughing this time, so that’s something. 

There’s a well of fondness at the center of him, too soon, for this lovely little man. The band is playing a very good rendition of Glenn Miller’s _Moonlight Serenade_ , and he wishes, with all his heart, that he could take Patrick’s hand and pull him out on the dance floor. 

_It will be different one day_ , his mother had told him in one of her rare maternal moments, when he’d confessed all he was to her in hushed terror, fourteen and convinced he was fundamentally wrong in some way. His mother — who lived her life like _Aphrodite_ returned to earth, and who was utterly consumed with the spotlight and her place in front of it — had turned to him where she sat at her vanity and regarded him with those clear aquamarine eyes that were her signature. She’d been unkind, firm, and unmovable as a mountain, and had told him all the ways he was exactly the person he was meant to be, and perfect for it. She had taken his battered and bruised heart in her hands and healed him, because his mother was thoughtless and cruel, except when she wasn’t. 

Patrick had been so brave last night. Maybe David can return the favor now.

“Have dinner with me.”

Patrick coughs, still recovering from seeing more of Irving than was strictly necessarily and chasing his view with a glassful of 1911 vermouth. “Dinner?”

“The meal traditionally eaten between lunch and breakfast,” David says, letting himself watch Patrick swallow, because he wants to, and because it makes Patrick so shy. He could subsist on Patrick’s blushes for the rest of his life. “Consisting of a wide variety of dishes, depending on the mood. I wouldn’t say no to pasta, or a fine cut of beef. What do you say?”

“About beef?”

He makes a face. “You’re hedging.”

“You took me by surprise,” Patrick admits, studying him for a long beat. He huffs a low laugh, rubbing the back of his head. “I honestly have no idea why you’re even talking to me.”

“Because you need someone to guide you towards better swill than that stout garbage,” David says, and it’s only partially true, but it’s so much fun to flirt like this because Patrick is keeping up, amusement bright in his dark eyes. 

“And that’s all? You want to be my sommelier?”

“Oh, I want much more than that,” David admits. “But I’d like to start by taking you to dinner.”

He’s asking for much more than either of them is ready for. But there’s something here, something between them, David feels it keenly, sharply, with a certainty born of having played this game many times before. This moment feels suspended in time, weightless and weighted with all that could be, and David _wants_ with a fierceness he doesn’t understand but could never turn away from. He’s been hurt, so many times, and he’s pragmatic enough to know that his suffering is far from over. But maybe, just maybe, he could offer a little pleasure to this beautiful man, and take a little pleasure in return, so that when they look back on this dark gray period of their lives they’ll remember a sliver of sunlight. 

“I shouldn’t,” Patrick says, hushed, and drops his eyes again to David’s mouth. 

“I know. Do it anyway.”

He watches the bob of Patrick’s adam’s apple, the way his fingers knot together on the table, knuckles going white. He’s terrified, and so heart-wrenchingly beautiful that David wishes he could gather him up and protect him from all the monsters of this world. 

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

A short, tight nod. “Okay, David Rose. I’ll go to dinner with you.”

David’s mouth opens and shuts a few times, his brain reeling for the next step, the next quick-witted move. He’s been staying on par with Patrick — or, Patrick’s been staying on par with him? — but he hadn’t actually expected Patrick to say yes. Or to say yes so quickly, without a bit of proper begging on David’s part. 

“Okay,” David says, sitting back in his chair. 

Patrick chuckles. “There’s that stunning conversationalist again.” 

“It’s too loud here for any conversation. I know somewhere where the bread is warm and the clientele is quieter.”

“Sounds perfect.” Patrick stands up smartly, slipping his hat under his arm and pulling on the cuffs of his jacket. Patrick is a small, compact person, but he carries himself like a giant, and he fills out the lines of his coat with his broad, proud shoulders thrown back, the triangle of his torso narrowed down to a trim waist and sturdy hips. It’s nearly obscene how beautiful he is in the awful, drab uniform, how long and thick his legs are, how solid and unmovable he appears to be, for all that he’s three inches smaller than David at the very least. David has never been one to be attracted to people on their physicality —in fact, sometimes he doesn’t notice it at all — but in this case the immediate, physical attraction is intense, undeniable. 

Patrick is digging into his billfold to pay for their drinks and David feels a lurch somewhere in his midsection, startling in its suddenness, because it isn’t the way that Patrick fills his uniform that attracts him. It’s the smile he gives the waitress when she comes to take their empty glasses, the way he sets a hand, so gently, at the small of David’s back before he remembers himself and pulls it back. The way that, as they spill out into the cold night air, he tugs the hat on his head though it’s still too small. 

Earnest. He’s so earnest. And he’s so beautiful. The chill air around them seems to clarify it for David, to sharpen the edges of his affection until it pricks at his skin like the thousands of stars in the sky, blotted out by the blazing lights of the city. 

“So. Where are you taking me, David?” Patrick’s got his hands shoved deep in the pockets of his overcoat, the streetlights blinking off the thin nameplate on his chest. He’s looking up and down both sides of the street like he’s expecting a building to simply pop into existence in the middle of the cobblestone.

David inclines his head up the seat and starts walking, Patrick’s footsteps echoing sharply off the street as he makes up the distance between them and falls into easy step besides David. “I hope you don’t mind a bit of a walk.”

“Wouldn’t be a very good Captain if I did, I’ve been walking for damn near a decade.” Patrick rubs his hands together and blows into them once, twice, rubbing them together briskly before tucking them back into his pockets. And, it’s a chilly night, but it’s not bitter cold, and trying to think of other reasons why Patrick’s having a hard time keeping his hands still is making David’s head spin. 

“You enlisted at eighteen?”

“Mm.”

“You were a baby. More of a baby.”

“I was eighteen. It’s what we — what the Brewers do at eighteen.”

“Ah.” It’s nothing he hasn’t heard before, especially with the crowd he’s run in until now. _It’s just what we d_ _o_ , they said, helpless in the face of the family business, like their lives were mapped out for them before they were born. David has never had much taste for the things people just do, but he’s never found a way out from underneath them, and he feels a growing camaraderie with Patrick on this front. “Your father?”

“And grandfather. Two uncles, a bunch of cousins who were really more like siblings.”

“No real siblings, then?” David turns at the next corner, and Patrick sucks his teeth and shakes his head. His eyes are sad, something distant buried at the bottom of them. 

“Afraid not. Mom and dad, well. Let’s just say it wasn’t ever in the cards for them.”

“You’re lucky,” the words are out quickly, bitterly, the tip of an iceberg that David’s been dodging all day. 

“What makes you say that?” 

Once, when David was young, his father had taken him with him on a tour of Japan to speak to a press minister about setting up a series of entertainment-based periodicals. David had spent most of his time in the hotel, running up and down carpeted marble halls while paid staff took turns looking at him disapprovingly and shushing. But there had been one day, when one of Johnny’s meetings had been cancelled, that he came back and picked David up for lunch. They’d been on their way to dumplings when a woman on the street corner, sat on an upside down bucket in front of a small card table scattered with hundreds of sheets of color paper, had reached out to him with a bundle in her hand. She’d shoved it at David, who’d taken it and kept walking and hadn’t stopped to look at it until they got to the restaurant. When he’d opened his hand, he found a slightly crumpled bright purple paper crane. He’d immediately been fascinated with it, putting it at the top of his plate as he ate and cradling it in his pocket the whole walk home. Once back to the hotel, he’d been so fascinated by the way the paper was folded into the curves and dips of an animal, he’d gently picked the folds apart.

He’d wept when he couldn’t ever manage to get the paper folded back together right. He’d destroyed something beautiful with his own curiosity, and he hadn’t thought about the moment for years until now, in this moment, feet away from Captain Patrick Brewer in the sharply cold air of a Parisian street. 

“Having a sibling can be a terror,” David answers, running his thumb along the base of the ring on his middle finger, his hand still tucked warmly into his pocket. 

“Older or younger?”

“Younger. My sister, Alexis.”

“Why don’t you strike me as the type of person to have a younger sister?”

“I’ve tried to give her back several times, I assure you.”

Patrick’s mouth presses into a line like he’s trying to suppress a smile and he nods, the two walking to the end of the block in silence. Patrick kicks at a loose stone in the street, sending it clattering noisily again, and David isn’t braced for when he speaks again. “I always thought — I mean. It can’t be all bad, can it? Having a sibling?”

David thinks of the pervasive wrongness of a ship stopped at sea, silent and hulking and seeming to define the physics of staying afloat. His throat tightens and he shrugs. “That question is better served for someone who’s not convinced his sister is a bridge troll.”

Patrick laughs, his head thrown back and his eyes squeezed shut and it pushes at David’s softest parts, the parts he can’t hide as he pulls his coat tighter around himself and begins to watch the restaurant awnings passing above them. They’re close to where they need to be, and the last thing David wants right now is to be lost on the street of Paris, Patrick in tow. 

“Wait,” Patrick says, his eyes beginning to track the storefronts around them. “Are we —” They round the corner and there it is across from them. The Café de Flore. “I know this place!”

Patrick sounds a little disappointed when he says it, like he’d been expecting David to take him somewhere new, and hidden. David shrugs and tries to keep his face from being completely overtaken by his smile. “I’d be surprised if you didn’t.”

“Why are we, I mean,” Patrick runs a hand across the back of his neck and stares at the ground like he’s expecting it to have answers. “This isn’t where I thought we’d be going.”

“You wanted to eat. Well. This place has some of the best food in the city.” David glances across the wide avenue before walking quickly, his eyes flitting back to Patrick with a tilt of his chin. 

“It’s crowded,” Patrick says when they reach the far curb, and there’s a guardedness to his voice that brings David up short and makes him look again. Patrick’s looking at the mahogany wood doors with his lip pinched between his teeth, his cheeks red and his hands fidgeting where they’re shoved in the pockets of his coat. And he’s talking about the crowds but there aren’t as many people around them now as there were last night at the club under the dressmaker’s shop, so that can’t be the entirety of the issue. David’s wondering if it has to do with the type of crowd, the press of brighter lights and bodies far less interested in their own affairs than they are the affairs of others. David can understand that, and it’s why he’s found a compromise.

“Not everywhere.” David opens the door and holds his arm out, ushering Patrick through it. David places a gentle hand on his shoulder as soon as they’re through the second set of doors, directing him up a recessed set of stairs hidden in the corner of the building, behind a rather obnoxious bust of Victor Hugo. When they get to the landing, David’s hand drifts lower, a near-casual graze of Patrick’s lower back that lets him know which tables they’re passing, which subtle turns they’re taking. 

David’s had his normal table for years. It’s a two-top, set with a single white gladiolus and a pair of taper candles, he’s thrilled he remembered to call Sarai and tell her he’d be in town for the fortnight. When he pulls out Patrick’s chair, and lowers the menu so it lays flat across his plate, Patrick doesn’t sit right away, standing with his hand on the back of the chair and his body pressing with infinite slowness into the invisible bubble of space David is used to surrounding himself with. 

“What is all this?”

“It’s my table at de Flore.”

“You say that like everyone just. Has a private table at de Flore.”

“Don’t they?”

David’s smile is dark, and sharp, and he watches Patrick watch him, sees the flush of attraction and intrigue that he’s seen so many times before. It looks different on Patrick’s face, admiration instead of possession, and it sinks a heat immediately into the V of David’s hips. “I too have a private table,” Patrick says, unbuttoning his jacket to sit. “Very exclusive.”

“Do you?”

“Only the finest dining Orly Air Base has to offer.”

Amusement trips its way over his mouth, and he bites his lip so he won’t laugh and spoil this moment. He takes off his own coat and sits opposite. “And I’m sure they serve only the finest in French cuisine.”

“You may say it’s an international affair,” Patrick says, opening his menu thoughtfully. “Every bite is a treat for the senses. There’s something to be said about the taste of canned corned beef when your tobacco ration has fallen into it.”

David’s lips roll inward, and Patrick’s eyes brighten with mirth. “Canned corned beef.”

“Mmm. My dining companions may speak to the contrary, but there’s nothing quite like a hardtack biscuit soaked in cold gravy to really bring the flavor profile alive.”

He can’t help it – he dissolves into laughter, and Patrick smiles, bright and so beautiful on his lovely face. “Straight faced! You’re a menace,” he says, and that gets him the laugh he wants. “I think most people believe the military is eating porterhouse steaks every night, especially the Americans and Canadians.”

“There aren’t enough cows in the entire world to feed the military,” Patrick says, and finally looks down at his menu. After a moment, he frowns. “David, as a man who regularly eats pork and bean c-rations and does a passably good imitation of enjoying them, please tell me this restaurant doesn’t serve rabbit food.”

“Rabbit food?”

Patrick eyeballs him over the table. “Rabbit food.”

He rubs a hand over his mouth to hide his amusement. The rasp of his stubble is loud in the quiet between them. “If you’d do me the honor of trusting me, I think I can feed you something better than rabbit food.”

Patrick closes his menu with a snap. “One condition.”

“And what’s that?”

“No beans, David.”

This man; this beautiful and funny man. “And what if I like beans?”

“Then this,” his eyes flick over the space between them, “ _flirtation_ between us is over.”

It’s said so bravely, so brashly. Patrick is steady and sure as he gazes at him, for all that he’s blushing again, for all that the words are tinged in the self-effacing humor David is starting to recognize as uniquely Patrick’s. David feels a well of _something_ open in him that tastes a little bit like dread, and a lot like anticipation. Fear, but not quite that. David hears everything Patrick is saying, and well, he’s never been able to resist that kind of courage.

“It’s always good to establish hard limits at the beginning,” he says thoughtfully, tapping the menu. “Likes, dislikes. Though I’m not sure where this bean aversion came from. Who doesn’t like beans?”

“Me,” Patrick says, attempting to keep that stern expression on his face, even as his lips sink into a delighted little curve, one so shy and soft and at odds with his words. “There can be no beans. Not boiled, not mashed, not smeared on toast.” He gives a theatrical shudder. “Especially not smeared on toast.”

“Not even garbanzos?”

“Fancy beans. No.”

“Cannellinis?”

“Italian version of beans, and also disgusting. No.”

“We have a serious problem then, Patrick, because I’m a bean connoisseur.”

“ _No._ ”

“Live on them,” David says gravely. “Breakfast, lunch and dinner.”

Patrick’s eyes meet his and there’s a depth to their warmth that keeps catching David off guard. “You wouldn’t be joking if you’d actually had to live off of them, David.”

That brings David up short, and some of the humor of their flirtation startles out of him. Patrick’s face softens, though, and he reaches across the table to brush his thumb lightly across David’s knuckles, hidden by their menus and the low light of the restaurant. “Sorry.”

“No, it’s — it’s alright.” David pulls his hand back, and drops his gaze down to the menu. He doesn’t like feeling off-balance like this, with this man before him who has seen things, done things, that David could never even imagine. He feels suddenly as if he’s bumped up against one of the limits he can’t step over, an invisible line in the sand he can’t cross. He realizes, painfully, that it was grossly indecent of him to tease in that manner, with a man who had suffered tremendously in the service of protecting lives. “I’m the one who should apologize. My mouth gets away from me sometimes.” He looks up with a wince. “That wasn’t flirtation.”

“Somehow, I think everything you do is flirtation,” Patrick says, fingers toying with the edge of his napkin, where David had pulled his hand back. “You don’t let many people see beyond it, do you?”

Presumptuous. “That’s a bit much.”

“Did I hit a nerve?”

He had, and David isn’t sure how he feels about it. “You called me a flirt.”

“Aren’t you?”

“No,” though that’s a lie — David is well aware of all he is, his lack of substance included. “Or maybe I am. What does it matter?”

“You matter.”

David laughs, a little huff of air, and shakes his head. “You know nothing about me, Patrick.”

“I don’t,” Patrick says, very softly, “but I’d like to. I think there’s a lot I’d like to know about you.”

David wants, with a sudden depth of need that he has rarely experienced, to reach across this table, slide his fingers through the back of Patrick’s hair, and pull him into a kiss. He wants that mouth on his so suddenly that his lips tingle, and his body sways forward quite without his say so. The waiter saves him, stopping at their table with his back straight and in impeccable blacks. “Bonsoir Monsieur Rose. Bienvenue au Café de Flore.”

“Bonsoir Jean, merci pour votre chaleureuse hospitalité.” 

“Avec quoi puis-je commencer ce soir?” 

David glances across the table. “What would you like to drink, Patrick?”

“Wine?”

Warmth pools in his chest. “Wine it is. If I acquiesce to the ‘no bean’ caveat, will you trust me?”

Amusement floods Patrick’s face. “I trust you.”

“J'aimerais commencer avec une bouteille de Brunello di Montalcino et le Tomates et mozzarella di buffala.”

“Et pour le plat principal?” 

“Confit de canard avec salade.”

“Très bien. Et allez-vous prendre un dessert ce soir?” 

David looks at Patrick and smiles before he says, “Je le pense. Nous aurons une Coupe Melba et un café crème.” 

“Parfait. Une délicieuse sélection. Puis-je vous apporter autre chose, monsieur?”

“Nous allons bien pour l'instant, Jean, merci.” 

Jean clicks his heels together smartly and bows in David’s direction before spinning and heading back towards the staircase and then it’s just he and Patrick again.

“That sounds like quite a bit of food.”

“Well. We’ll eat what we want and leave what we don’t.”

“Oh. Okay.” Patrick says it like it hadn’t occurred to him and for a split second, David sees himself the way Patrick must see him — extravagant, excessive. _Gaudy,_ Sebastien had once described him. David feels shame flame in his face, and rushes to correct himself.

“Or, I mean. I’m sure Stevie wouldn’t mind a little late-night nosh.”

Patrick ducks his head, smiling down at the tabletop. “Oh, of that I have no doubt, David.”

A waiter David doesn’t recognize drops off a bucket and bottle at his elbow, flipping over the two fat, round wine glasses with ruthless efficiency before he’s gone again. David pours them both a hearty glass of the deep purple red, and David feels an odd sense of pride as he watches Patrick swirl the glass, take a long sniff, and pull the wine slowly across his tongue. Patrick Brewer is a quick learner, and David has always admired a quick learner. 

“Do you like it?”

Patrick’s eyes flicker open, from where they’d fallen to half-mast. “I’ve never had anything like this before.”

“It’s called Brunello di Montalcino,” David says, swirling his own glass. The scent reminds him of dried figs and cherries, and the first taste is exquisite, lighting up all the nerves in his mouth and throat. Hazelnut and anise, fig and dried rose, with the almost unexpected smoothness of chocolate at the end. It’s simply the most delicious wine ever made, the gold standard for all Italian reds, and costs so much per glass that Patrick would likely never have it again. 

He takes another long drink, studying David over the rim of his glass. “What do you do, David?”

“Do?” It’s been a very long time since he met someone who didn’t have at least passing knowledge of him, at least indirectly through his parents. “My family owns and operates the Rose Magazine Group.”

Patrick’s eyebrows shoot up. “Your family owns a magazine?”

“My family owns twenty-eight magazines, including _Life_ and _Harper’s Bazaar_.”

Patrick looks suitably impressed, but then people usually are. “What do you do?”

“What do you mean?”

“Are you a writer?”

Once. A long time ago, in another life, he’d fancied himself a copywriter. His father had put a pin in that quickly, afraid to stir up bad blood, to have the stink of nepotism on their name. David had threatened to go to another company, and his father had threatened to cut off his inheritance. Back then David hadn’t been brave enough to walk away from the comfort and security of his family’s fortune, and he’d quietly set those dreams aside. “No, not a writer. I own three art galleries in New York City.”

“Wow,” Patrick breathes. “So what, you sell art?”

“And showcase works by new artists, yes.”

“Do you enjoy it?”

He didn’t. He had once, when the idea had first taken seed. He always loved art, the way light and shadow play together, the way the world is made of lines and colors and nothing ever quite looks the same to two people. But then he’d turned it into a job. And he doesn’t enjoy it any longer, hasn’t for a very long time, but he’s stuck with it for want of anything else. It’s something to fill his days, and he’s good at it, but this trip — and Eli — has soured even that small remaining joy. “It’s something to do.”

Patrick leans back and studies him, frankly, honestly. “If you don’t like it, why do it?”

“Why do anything? I’m good at it, and the flexibility of the work allows me to travel.”

“Like coming to Paris.”

David nods and runs his thumb up the stem of his wine glass. “Like coming to Paris.”

“So you’re in town for business.”

“Not precisely. Although, I guess loosely speaking, there isn’t ever a city I’m in that isn’t for business.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Art is _everywhere_ ,” he says, drawing out the last word into several syllables with a flourish of his hand that elicits another laugh from Patrick. “ _Artists_ are everywhere. Especially in Paris.”

“But you’re _not_ here for work, precisely.”

David just shrugs and fingers the tines of his salad fork. David doesn’t know why he’s holding so tightly to the story; he’d told it to Stevie several times already, in half a dozen permutations, depending on how much the martyr he was feeling at the moment. But he’s never had someone sit across from him and ask to hear his stories because they want to hear them, and want to hear them because they’re David’s. He couldn’t name it, but he’s scared. Scared of what happens when he runs out of closets Patrick feels like prying open. 

“I’m here because of my sister, actually.”

“Alexis.”

“The one and, thankfully, only.”

“I hope I’m not keeping you from her.” 

The idea is so ludicrous, and the look on Patrick’s face is so soft, that David laughs and immediately feels horrible about it. “Oh, there aren’t enough words in the English language to assure you that is most certainly not the case.”

“Good thing you’re bilingual.”

“Tri.”

“What?”

“I’m trilingual. Well, quad if you count the like ten Hebrew words I remember from Hebrew school. I also speak Spanish.”

Patrick looks at him like he’s said something special. All of David’s friends took several languages at boarding school, and David’s Spanish tutor had been the most...attentive of all the ones he’d ever had. 

“Well, David. Color me impressed.” The way Patrick’s looking at him, impressed doesn’t even begin to cover it, and David squirms under the other man’s steady, heady gaze. “So, where _is_ your sister then, if she’s not joining us this evening?”

“You really want to talk about my sister, don’t you?”

“Only because you clearly don’t. If I’ve stepped over a line, I apologize. We can talk about whatever you’d like.”

“It’s not that I don’t want to talk about her.” He takes a steady break and reaches across the table to take Patrick’s wine glass, finishing the last dregs of wine in his glass before he pours them both another generous glass. He slides Patrick’s back across the table, and Patrick takes it with a little jerk and an annoyed dip of his eyebrows. “It’s just that at the moment there isn’t much to say. She isn’t here because she isn’t in Paris anymore. Her current paramour whisked her off to Spain.”

“Without you?”

“Before I got here.”

The same waiter who brought the wine is making his way quietly to their table, hands full of a solid tray laden with two large plates of thickly sliced mozzarella cheese, tiny pearl tomatoes, bright green basil leaves resting on top. Both men sit back to make room for the plates on the small table, and Patrick waits patiently while David makes the requisite small talk. It’s not until the waiter is through the stairwell door that Patrick speaks. “I don’t think I’m following. You came to Paris from New York, for your sister, and then she left you here?”

“Not so much ‘with’ her as ‘for’ her, but. Yes, the rest is correct.” 

“That seems. Inconsiderate.”

“So you have met my sister, then.”

“I’m sorry that happened, David. Especially because…” Patrick takes another bite and makes a noise deep in the back of his throat that’s appreciative and gravelly and sounds torn from his throat. It becomes a part of David, and he itches with the desire to find out exactly what else he can do to tease that noise from Patrick again. “Wait, how did you get here? Commercial flights are grounded.”

Patrick’s question sweeps David’s legs out from underneath him, he’s so busy staring at the line of Patrick’s throat. He answers quickly, and simply, without any of his usual suave, because David Rose is always smooth, except for when he inexorably isn’t. “I know. I bought berth on a liner.”

“And you came via London.” David nods. “I see.” Patrick’s knuckles are white where they grip the stem of his wine glass, and there’s a tightness to his eyes when he meets David’s the next time. “I am incredibly glad to see that you made it to Paris, then, David.”

There’s a hitch in his voice and a sheen to his eye that could just be the dry air, the low lighting, a million other factors that won’t mean anything to David. Or it could be something that means the entire world. He opens his mouth to speak, but snaps it closed again when Patrick continues. 

“When I was young — like, really young, maybe five? Or six? I was on my Poppy Brewers farm and I fell into this abandoned root cellar on the edge of the property. No one knew it was there, or why the previous owners would’ve put a cellar so far from the house, but that didn’t really matter much once I’d fallen inside it, you know? Anyway. I was down there for two days before my cousin Victoria found me.”

David chokes a little on his drink of wine and his eyes go wide. His mind immediately fills with flashes of a small, terrified Patrick, well before he’d been Captain Brewer, his eyes too big for his face, cold and shivering and smeared with dirt. It breaks his heart in a new way, a mirrored way, like it’s a smaller, younger version of himself whose shattering. 

“It’s the most scared I’ve ever been, David. More than signing up, more than saying goodbye, more than the foxholes and the endless never knowing. In that hole, in the dark, with nothing I could do to fix the problem, minutes yet miles away from the people I loved who I knew could help me, if only they knew — that was the most scared I’d ever been.”

“Why are you telling me this,” David asks in a whisper, and Patrick looks at him with a shrug and the smallest seedling of a smile.

“Just seemed like maybe you might relate to that, somehow. Plus. You did tell me about your sister. Sort of.” And he winks at David, or tries to wink, his face crinkling on one side, and it’s so intimate, and so ridiculous, it sets loose a laugh in David that carries through until the next course arrives. 

The rest of dinner passes in small waves of good food, quiet conversation, a peeling back of layers with slow and careful precision — David learns about Patrick’s parents Clint and Marci, about Rachel and Rachel’s new beau Robert, the small but infinite branches of the Brewer family tree. Patrick learns about a fear of moths, the perils of showing modern art in the current climate, the differences between rain in New York and rain in Paris. There’s a steady flow of words between them that don’t finish until Patrick’s small ceramic espresso cup makes a hollow clinking sound as he sets it down, empty. 

It's so easy to talk to Patrick, and David doesn’t quite know why that is. He’s well aware of all that he is, and historically the flaws of his character have made it difficult for others to get close to him in the way he’s wanted for more years than he can admit to. Yet now here he is, halfway around the world, sitting across from this amazing, surprising man with the most open face, and the most beautiful smile, he’s ever seen.

The _want_ in him takes his breath away, because it isn’t the surface attraction that appeals, though Patrick is beautiful in the way pedestrian men from small towns could be. No, David’s attraction only begins there. He’s taken in by the way Patrick holds himself, strong and sure and so proud – the way he’s met David quip for quip, and even the way he made David back down. Apologize. He hasn’t apologized in ten years, not to _anyone_.

Patrick is filled with a kindness David stopped believing in long ago. He has no idea what Patrick sees when he looks across the table, if he’s taken in by the glitz and glamour of what David projects to the world. He hopes not. God. He hopes not.

He wants to learn everything about this man, inside and out. He wants to kiss that beautiful slash of a mouth, and find out what he smells like behind his ears; he wants to unbutton and untuck all that drab olive until Patrick is naked under him, pale skin flushed up gorgeous. He wants to press kisses to every inch of him, to explain to Patrick how much it means to him to be shown kindness. He wants to prove to him how good it could be, if he’d just _let_ David. If he could set aside his obligations, for just one night.

David has never yearned for someone a day in his life. The feeling is alien and slightly grotesque and he _does not like it,_ as much as he wants to wallow in the feeling and wrap it around himself like a bearskin rug in winter. Patrick makes admit to the deepest wants of his heart, and in those brown eyes David can see happiness, so much happiness, for them both if this were another time and another place.

But it isn’t. It’s not another time, or another place, and there is a powerful want in David, a want he’s never experienced before and never wants to experience again, but a want nevertheless.

He doesn’t know how to approach it, how to even ask, but this restaurant is not the place for it. “Would you take a walk with me?”

“I’d like that,” Patrick replies, with so much in his gaze that David can’t acknowledge or name, for fear that they’ll call to all the parts of himself.

_This is an unmitigated disaster_ , he can hear his mother saying, and she wouldn’t be wrong. David didn’t come to Paris to find someone – he came to Paris to save his little sister. He’d been fully prepared to pay off whoever needed paying off, and get fabulously drunk off his ass on the finest Parisian wine, and if he’d been _truly_ lucky, sock Stavros in his royal pug face. He hadn’t expected Patrick Brewer, who with so little effort had wormed his way through the tiniest crack in David’s defenses.

He wanted. He wanted to know more. He wanted to know Patrick until Patrick was a sobbing ruin against the pearl white of David’s sheets. 

The cool air feels good on his overheated skin as they leave the restaurant. When he risks a glance to his left, Patrick is tugging his ridiculous little hat on his beautiful big head, and oh. Oh.

The streets are quiet, as it’s nearing eleven and even the latest diners are finding their way home. David begins to wander, slowly, down the sidewalk, his long legs and easy pace taking him slowly up the Rue Bonaparte and towards the river. It’s as quiet as he’s ever seen the roads, and it’s a chilling reminder of the subtle ways life had yet to return to its full shine, as though the world were still relearning to breathe. Patrick walks alongside him, his breath full and even in the fresh night air. 

“Can I ask you a question?” David begins his entreaty without any real idea what he wants to know, because. Well, truthfully because he wants to know everything. 

“Of course.”

“Why’d you sign up?”

Patrick huffs out a breath and cuts a sideways look at David. They’re coming up on the corner, and he waits until they cover the distance and walk across the intersection, before he answers.

“I told you.”

“Did you?”

“It’s just — in my family, it’s just what you do when you become an adult.”

“Forgive me for saying it, Captain Brewer, but. In my experience doing things because that’s the way they’ve always been good isn’t a recipe for much more than mediocrity.” David takes three more steps before he realizes Patrick isn’t keeping pace with him anymore. When David stops to look behind him, Patrick is just standing and staring at him. David’s stomach plummets. “I’m sorry, should I not have —”

“No!” Patrick cuts him off. “No, I. I think you’re right about that. It’s just that no one’s ever put it to me quite like that before.” He starts walking again, only this time he’s closed the small gap between them so that he and Patrick are walking pressed, shoulder to shoulder. They’ve hit the Quai de Conti and David should end the night here. Should leave them both with the memory of good wine and good food and this series of shared secrets that, so far, hasn’t turned around to bite at either one of them. But Patrick’s body is still pressed so close to David’s he can feel the heat of him, even through the layers of silk and wool and government-issued cotton. 

So instead, he veers to the left and leads them to the Pont des Artes. “So. Why did you enlist, Patrick?”

“Because I wanted to make a difference,” he says. “To help people. My dad...well. I got lucky enough to have a brain that works well with patterns, and the outdoors, and when the chance came to try my hand at cartography…” He trails off like David is supposed to have any idea what that means. 

“Cartography is maps?”

“Hmm.”

“So what do you...do?”

“Well, see, David. I could tell you that, but then I’d have to kill you.”

“Oh. State secrets, then?”

“Incredibly. Top level security clearance.”

“I...can’t actually tell if you’re kidding.”

Patrick stops walking, he’s laughing so hard. He leans against the railing of the bridge and lets his chin fall to his chest as his shoulder shake and tears start rolling down his cheeks. David didn’t think it was all that funny, but he’ll take any excuse the universe will give him to stop time and watch Patrick laugh. “Sorry, I’m sorry David! It’s just — it’s something we say in the barracks. No one with security clearance like that would walk around talking about it with any gorgeous Tom, Dick, or Harry off the street.”

_Oh._ “Well I’m glad to know the good guys’ secrets are safe with you,” David says, bracing his arms on the railing and reaching for Patrick’s hand, running the back of his fingers across the back of Patrick’s before he pushes them ever so gently between Patrick’s. They’re not really holding hands — more the opposite, in fact — but David can feel electricity spark at every point of contact between them. He’s not breathing, and he’s pretty sure Patrick isn’t either, if the intent focus of his gaze on their hands is any indication. The mirth fades from Patrick’s face slowly, replaced with something David recognizes, even if he can’t name it. David flexes his fingers, moving them up and down between Patrick’s, before trailing them down the back of Patrick’s hand and over the knob of bone in his wrist.

David flips his hand and ghosts his fingers over the inside of Patrick’s wrists, over the thin skin that covers his veins, blue and branching like the river in front of them. He pauses, his palm hovering over Patrick’s, and watches Patrick’s jaw clench. 

The urge to lean down and kiss him is so intense that David is shaking with it. He’s never wanted like this so strongly, as if it were pulled from his guts, as if the need were a living, breathing thing that would shred his insides if not given an outlet. They’re alone, and it’s so late, but he knows as easily as he knows himself that Patrick is going to rabbit if he tries.

Patrick’s not ready for everything David wants to give him, but maybe, maybe, he can show Patrick that it’s okay to want it in return. 

He laces their fingers together and gently, gently, brings the back of Patrick’s hand to his mouth.

He kisses, there, along that rough skin. Working hands, strong hands, knuckles mottled with callouses from his hard-lived life. Dry skin along the edge of the hollow between thumb and first finger, and he presses one, two, three gentle kisses to that place, that place where Patrick held his gun, where he protected himself. The thought sends a swoop through him, but it’s far away, a thought he’ll dissect and pull apart later when he’s lying in bed tonight, stripping his cock with all the terrified urgency building in him. He kisses along those big knuckles, along his pointer finger, his middle finger, and David can almost feel them on his skin, the ghost of touch on his neck, his chest, down low between his legs. Inside him. The thought jacktrips through him and he closes his eyes against it for just a moment, just to get himself under control, before he chances a look at his companion.

There’s an answered fear in Patrick’s dark eyes, but it’s eclipsed by the way his mouth has trembled open, one corner slipped between Patrick’s teeth as he watches. David leans forward and does it again, pressing the swell of his lips to the knuckle of Patrick’s middle finger, letting his bottom teeth drag lightly across Patrick’s skin as he keeps eye contact. Patrick’s eyes widen, and darken, until David is swimming in a gaze that’s nothing but pupils. Patrick’s body shifts towards David, pressing them a fraction closer together, and an almost sub aural rumble issues from Patrick’s chest. He’s opening his mouth to say...something, when a woman laughs at the other end of the bridge. It’s a high, joyous sound, but Patrick jumps back like it’s the shot of a gun. He immediately shoves his hand — the hand that had felt so right in David’s — back into his pocket as his eyes narrow and his gaze rakes the bridge and now David can see it. Can see on full display what he’s only seen hints of so far.

The tension in Patrick’s shoulders, the way he squares his back to the bridge and the hand not in his pocket is resting at his hip, eyes that won’t settle on a single point but instead travel over the length of the bridge in regimented sections — Patrick is a soldier, and a captain, and has lived through a life, a war, that means a laugh isn’t a laugh and sometimes joy can’t be joyous. David aches for him, a blooming pain that folds his shoulders inward to his heart, a mourning dove pulling in its wings. Patrick runs his tongue along his lips and huffs out something that might be a laugh, his body finally relaxing against the thick metal top railing of the bridge. 

David spins to press his back to the metal, his body shape matching Patrick’s. “I’m. I’m so sorry,” Patrick says, pressing the heels of his palms into his eyes. He’s still shaking, a thin buzz of energy that David can feel more than he can see, but the quiet heat of the moment is gone and all that’s left is the sour tang of adrenaline that David can almost taste. “That was. I was surprised.”

“That’s understandable, I suppose.”

“Is it?” Patrick’s asking like he actually wants an answer, so David gives him one.

“With the current state of the world? More than, I would think.”

“It’s just. I wasn’t expecting there to be people still on the bridge,” Patrick hedges, and David waves his hands through the air like he’s batting away smoke.

“You don’t need to explain, Patrick.”

“I think I do, though? Because I — I was enjoying that,” Patrick says, his voice low and reedy as his eyes stare at the toes of his boots. “I was enjoying that very much. But I’m not used to. Enjoying myself. Like that. Especially in front of other people. It could be _complicated_ for me.” He runs a finger along the cuff of his sleeve, and it’s like seeing Patrick’s body react — a truth he already knew clicks into a deep knowing for David, and it pierces him like an arrow.

Patrick’s speaking slowly, but surely, like he’s picking his way through a field of words to put together a bouquet for David, one he’ll see and innately understand. He’s taking such great care with David, and David wants to return the favor. 

“Complicated. I can understand complicated. But it doesn’t need to. Be complicated. It can just be too much wine at dinner, and a harmless pass, a step too far, wouldn’t you say?”

“Is that what that was?”

This sweet man. “Yes,” he says, a smile tickling his mouth. 

“I liked it.”

“My kiss or the pass?”

“Yes,” Patrick says, and David bites his lip so he won’t laugh. “I’ve never done this before, David.”

Most men nearly thirty fell into two camps: betrothed since fourteen or adventurous. There wasn’t much in the way of deviation, in his experience; granted, the men he knew owned yachts and dated hotel heiresses, but he figured the same could be said of men of more humble beginnings. “You mentioned a girl.”

“Rachel,” Patrick says. “I’ve known her since I was seven years old. We were in Sunday School together.”

It’s teeth-rottingly sweet. “And it was love over first communion bible?”

“She hated me,” Patrick says, laughter in his voice. “I always knew the answers and she didn’t. She called me a know-it-all and dumped apple juice down my trousers.”

“Sounds like a great girl.”

“She was. She is,” Patrick says, quiet and low. “She’ll make someone a wonderful wife someday, if that’s what she wants. I thought it was what I wanted. We started dating so young… everyone just assumed it was meant to be, little Rachel Brown and little Patty Brewer destined for the white picket fence life. If the war hadn’t broken out, I’d have asked her to marry me. And I think I would have made us both miserable.”

"Why?"

"Because the duty you feel to your country and the duty you feel to your spouse shouldn't spring from the same well," Patrick says, pushing off the metal crossbar of the bridge and walking towards the far street. And David Rose is good at reading people, quickly and smoothly as much for his own safety and good graces, but he can't seem to figure out which bee has flown into Patrick's bonnet, and the curiosity tugs him after Patrick like he's on a leash. 

"I don't understand," he says, his long legs shortening their stride to keep pace with Patrick.

"I don't know, David," Patrick says with a huff of his shoulders. "Haven't you ever not done something you should have, or gone somewhere you shouldn't go, or been someone brash and contrary just because you knew that NOT doing, or going, or being would be the far worse outcome in the coin flip?"

And David doesn't know why he does it, other than it feels like a dare. Like Patrick sees him and knows and that's what pulls David's hand across the cavern of space between them and into the squared off pocket of Patrick's military issue overcoat. He finds Patrick's hand and threads their fingers together, pressing the dry cold of his palm to the warm, rough skin of Patrick's and fighting back a shiver at the contrast. He keeps walking, and feels Patrick's step hitch, and for the smallest second, it feels like David is dragging Patrick with him, until Patrick finds his footing and begins to walk with David, steps at pace and the slightest press of fingers into the back of David's hand.

He doesn’t say anything, but David doesn’t miss the small smile that settles into both corners of his mouth, like he’s afraid anything bigger might break his face open, might set his secrets free and he’s not ready to let go of the kite string. But his hand is still in David’s, and his eyes aren’t roving the bridge for dangers real _or_ imagined, so David decides he’ll take what’s offered to him in that moment. David wants to swing their hands, to twirl Patrick underneath his arm like they’re doing the Lindy, down one of the most iconic bridges in Paris holding the hand of a uniformed man he’s known less than 48 full hours. David’s not the only one who’s dangerous to Patrick’s old way of life — if he’s not careful where he steps, he’s going to skip right from the David Rose he recognizes into a David Rose completely foreign to him. 

They reach the Quai Francois Mitterand in what feels like record time to David, and David can feel the night shift, the way all the best ones do when they fade from being a night that is to a night that was. Patrick keeps the hand holding David’s tucked in his pocket, but raises the other one to hail a passing taxi for David. 

“Thank you for the walk, David.”

“Well. Thank you for joining me.” 

They’re standing face to face, the air between them heating rapidly as David slowly, more slowly than he’s ever done anything, disentangles his hand from Patrick’s and pulls his hand out of his pocket. His fingers are cramping and the air feels even colder on his skin as his hand makes the short trip from Patrick’s pocket to his own, but David’s already itching to take Patrick’s hand again. 

“This has been a wonderful night.” He looks up at David from underneath the brim of his hat, and his eyes are wide and round in his face, the dim golden light of the gas lamps on the bridge reflecting off the shine in his eyes. David has been looked at by some of the most beautiful people in the world, but has never felt so taken apart. 

He takes a fraction of a step closer to Patrick, pressing his chest into the other man’s space, letting his shoulders drop and broaden, his body taking up space as he leans towards Patrick, his eyes still locked on the deep wells of brown watching him come closer. He licks his lips just to watch Patrick glance down at his mouth, and when Patrick does, it sets fire to David from the inside out. “It can get better,” he says, his voice low and raw. 

Patrick’s chuckle is dark and rips through David like a freight train. “Oh, I have no doubt David. You’re at the _Gaston_?”

“Yes.”

“Some fancy suite, I’d guess?”

“Simply the best, naturally.” He’s got his lips so close to Patrick’s he can practically taste the coffee and Montalcino. Patrick’s breath dusts across his lips, his chin, the tip of his nose as Patrick watches face and gives him another one of those half-hidden, bitten off smiles that start at the corner of his mouth and ripple across his face. 

“Then I’ll be there at ten tomorrow to pick you up. Be ready,” and Patrick reaches past David to pull open the door to the cab. David wants to growl with the adorable frustration of it all, but instead he steps as closely as he can into Patrick’s space as he slides into the back-bench seat. Patrick closes the door and David leans out of the window.

“Can we make it 10:30. I’m afraid I’m not much of an early riser.”

“We can make it whenever you’d like, David.” 

And Patrick has the unmitigated gall to wink at him as he slaps the cab twice on the top of the door and steps back. David watches him, there on the curb, hands in his pockets and face unbearably fond, until the cab turns the corner and Patrick disappears.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just like last time, and every time to come, we have to give all the love in the world to our crack team of betas: [DP](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DisgruntledPelican/pseuds/DisgruntledPelican), [TINN](https://archiveofourown.org/users/this_is_not_nothing/profile), [helvetica](https://archiveofourown.org/users/helvetica_upstart/pseuds/helvetica_upstart), and our sensitivity reader [whetherwoman](https://archiveofourown.org/users/whetherwoman/pseuds/whetherwoman). This story wouldn't be what it is (even at this point in the journey) without all their incredible help.


	3. Chapter Three

It’s a soldier's duty to function on very little sleep, but of all the aspects of military life that had taken adjusting to, that’s the one that bothers Patrick least. He’s used to being up at dawn, watching the world blink awake while his mind untangles whatever problem that’s been served up to him, working to break the code of his life.

After David’s taxi pulls away, he walks the rest of the way back to the hostel and still, he’s not tired. There’s an energy humming underneath his skin, a fire stoked by the memory of David’s mouth, his eyes, the planes of his cheekbones and the way his breath hitched before he’d reached into Patrick’s pocket and taken his hand. He can still feel the warm, smooth press of David’s palm. For the first time in his life, he’d felt self-conscious about his rough, workers skin, the inelegant roundness of his blunt fingers. He’d let David press his fingers against Patrick’s in the solitary, stark light of a Parisian evening and when he hadn’t been able to tolerate it, David had met him on his ground. He tried to think of what Rachel would have done, or what he would have done for her, if one of them had pulled away from the attempt to hold hands. Patrick’s hand feels cold and empty at the thought and though it’s a contradiction, it makes him smile, this notable difference between what would have been and what is. 

He slips out of his jacket and hangs it in the small wardrobe in the corner of his room, unbuttons his shirt and folds it along the edges and seams, crisp lines and practiced corners, a place for everything and everything in its place. The hostel only has a communal washroom so Patrick is quick about it, should the family with four children down the hall need the facilities. He washes his face and ducks his head under the running tap, trying to shake himself out of the strange, restless mood he’s found himself in, and hoping that the cold running over his ears will be enough. It isn’t. He dries himself off and rubs a hand over the raspy points of his chin, and sighs at his reflection in the mirror. 

Even ready for bed, slipped beneath the covers with his small lamp casting a golden glow over the next chapter of _The Lady in the Lake,_ he still can’t focus on the words. He loves Chandler, loves a good mystery, even if this one does touch a little closer to home than he’d been anticipating. But tonight, the words blur together into a solid block in the middle of the page. 

He’s got four more days in France, and then a life and a duty to get back to. It feels far too fast to already be having trouble imagining a life without David Rose in it. Patrick closes his eyes and leans his head against the headboard and sighs, forcing his shoulders away from his ears and his tongue off the roof of his mouth. 

He takes stock because he must, because Patrick is first and foremost a realist and he’s never been one to back away from hard truths, even if this is the hardest truth he’d ever faced. 

Touching David, being touched by David, felt like nothing he’d ever experienced before. The goose pimples had chased each other across his body, up his cheeks and down his chest, before dipping down into the hollow place inside of him where the longing he felt lived. He had gone so many years thinking what he felt with Rachel was all there was to feel in this world, and he’d been content. Like a man who had eaten nothing but porridge his entire life, he had been satiated but never satisfied, full but never comforted. 

David Rose was roast duck and champagne, chocolate truffles and filet mignon. He _exploded_ across Patrick’s senses, and made him feel overwhelmed to the point of immobility. He’d frozen on the bridge, until he’d started like a wild animal and practically run away from David. And again, outside the taxi, the smell and height and presence of David Rose pushing into all the spaces of his life where Patrick felt empty. David had cracked open the door to a world Patrick had only ever heard of, so gently that Patrick almost missed the sliver of light that grew until he was standing on the threshold, and his step had faltered without knowing what was on the other side.

Heat flushes up the back of Patrick’s neck, and he practically throws the book onto the small wooden table that completes the furnishings in the small room of the hostel he’d paid for. He still wasn’t anywhere near tired, but he flicked off the lamp and sank down in the bed until the blanket grazed his shoulders, clamped his eyes shut, and started to count backwards from 1,000. It was a trick that had put him to sleep countless times in the field, the mindless drone of numbers running backwards through his head; always predictable, always comforting in their rigidity. 

At 830 he squeezes his eyes shut tighter.

At 667 he inhales stiffly, knuckling his eyes.

At 512, Patrick swallows the sound locked deep in his throat and sinks his hand down under the blankets.

He’s never been one for self-pleasure, because there are some things that will forever persist, and he was taught from such a young age that this is wrong. As a youngster he’d driven his passions into other things, building cars and fixing fences and assistant coaching for the junior football league. He wanted it so much all the time back then, almost to the point where it was all he could think about, and in hindsight he thinks the hunger of that young and inexperienced body masqueraded itself as love.

Rachel had smelled like cherry blooms and lilacs, and the cut of her skirts had always beautifully accentuated her waist, her hips, her legs. She’d had a smile like the first break of summer, sly and funny and bright, with a shock of dark red hair so glossy it caught the sunlight and set her ablaze. She had been beautiful in the way beautiful things could be – timeless and effortless and serene. And Patrick had thought he’d loved her, so much so that he’d given her his letterman jacket and took her to prom and bought her a promise ring that he’d known was a mistake before he ever gave it to her.

Not even the thought of Rachel is enough to soften the stiff length between his legs. He’d known it was a mistake long before the night it happened, her soft words and her soft hands and the firm resolve in her eyes doing nothing to temper the guilt he felt, the fear that he’d leave her in the family way without the security of his name. He’d been so young, and so stupid, but the deep, simple pleasure of being inside her had been so overwhelming that even now it’s enough to make his hair stand on end. Nothing about the sex they’d shared together had felt truly earthshaking to him except that first slow, aching sink into the heat of her, and he’d nearly gone out of his mind at the pleasure of her, tight and hot around him. She’d been in pain and they’d had to stop, but Patrick will never, ever forget what that felt like, to be enveloped so completely, to be taken in so thoroughly.

A shiver rolls from his shoulders to his toes, and if anything his prick goes even harder in his slick and trembling hand, at the thought of – of David – of the heat of David’s body. It’s enough to make him scrunch up like a little bug, muscles pulling in tight against the stab of arousal that rocks through him, and he rolls over onto his belly to bury his face against the pillow. His fingers wrap ever tighter around his prick and he undulates, thrusting into the heat of his hand. 

David. His wide shoulders bare, freckled and tanned and dusted with hair, covered in welts from Patrick’s fingernails. David would smile, his perfectly coiffed hair a mess from Patrick’s fingers, from the sweat building between them. Naked in this bed, in the quiet dark of late evening, his skin would glow in the candlelight. Patrick can imagine the thick mat of hair at his chest, veeing down his stomach; the strength of his legs, using his height to push and pull Patrick where he wants him to be.

He’d roll them over so Patrick was on the bottom, and kiss him like Patrick has never been kissed, with ownership, saying without words _you’re mine now_. His mouth would be hot and demanding, and his tongue — Patrick had never been kissed like that, not ever, and he doesn't know how it’ll feel, but he’s never wanted it so much in his entire life, to have David claiming him. They’d thrust against each other like teenagers, hot skin against hot skin, and David would look at him with those sparkling, mischievous eyes of his and murmur _Let me look after you_ , and mouth his way down between Patrick’s legs. 

“Oh God,” he gasps. “God damn.” He presses his sweat-slicked forehead into the mattress and, with a thrill that exists even though he knows no one can hear him, he whispers David’s name right beside the Lord’s as he finishes in a rush, blinding and white-hot as it courses through him. 

His heart is racing so fast he can’t catch his breath, and from one moment to the next he’s weeping, and laughing, his heart a bittersweet ache in his chest. He’d known, he’d _always known_ this simple little truth, but he’d hidden it from everyone, even himself. He thought he could avoid it forever, buy a little white house with a little picket fence and marry Rachel, give her all the red-headed babies she could ever want. They’d have a farm and Patrick would raise goats and sheep, and Rachel would teach their children. They’d go to church every Sunday, and Rachel would bring pies, and Patrick would help with barn raising and maybe in time become a deacon, like his father before him had. He’d live and he’d die and he’d never acknowledge this truth at the very heart of him, where the real Patrick Brewer had been trapped for so long.

All it had taken was a great war, and a chance meeting with a man who had upended his entire life with the power of his funny little smile.

He rolls onto his side, clutching his hands to his aching chest, and shudders against the weight of this truth, as another, deeper and heavier load slides from his shoulders as if it had never been. 

He’s in Paris for four more days. It’s time to let the real Patrick Brewer out to breathe.

*

The sun kisses the sky with a gentle blush, and Patrick is awake to see it happen, his hands wrapped around a chipped ceramic cup in the tiny public kitchenette of the hostel. He’d drifted off to sleep as the muscles in his chest loosened progressively, a strength of reassurance settling into his bones long enough that he was able to get a few deep, heavy hours of rest before habit got him up shortly before dawn. A quick glance at his watch told him his hours of sleep numbered in the sub-five range, but. The full length of the day stretches out before him and he’s itching to start. 

He carries on a slowly, mostly one-sided conversation with another GI who’s on his R&R, this one an American named Giovanni from New Jersey, now living in Italy with a girl he’d met when his troops rolled through her tiny Italian village. According to him, they’d taken one look at each other and gotten married the next day. 

When he’d heard the story days ago, Patrick had filed it under the kind of fairy tales strangers told one another to put their lives into neat little boxes, wrapped presents of insight and understanding that did nothing but make things simple and neat, when Patrick knew life was neither. That was before he met David, and wondered what would happen if he told the rest of the world to take a long hike off a short pier while he kept his world built of speakeasy smiles and hands held deep in pockets. 

This is the third morning in a row that he and Giovanni have rustled themselves awake long before the other hostel guests, sharing thick black cups of coffee while the world blinks awake around them. Giovanni’s been in Paris for a month, looking for work, while his pregnant girl waits for him back in San Remo. Which means that not only does he speak French better than Patrick, but he’s gotten a much better feel for the kinds of things you don’t see when you’re only looking at the sheen on a city. He and Patrick have been talking about places off the beaten path, the places that hold the real, beating heart of Paris. Because David is the kind of man who has seen life hung by a string of pearls, has eaten the best food at the most beautiful places in the world, and who has no inkling for the way small people work and live. Patrick can’t wait to show him the _real_ Paris.

He feels buoyed with a joy he’s never felt before, all through his morning ablutions. A part of it is anticipation, a simple happiness in getting to spend what is going to be a warm and beautiful day with a warm and beautiful man. There is a part of him honestly terrified at the chance he’s taking, but it’s eclipsed by the same feeling he gets when he’s made a very sound decision that has a 60% chance of blowing up in his face: pure, unadulterated excitement. Fear licks up his spine but he _likes_ it, and it makes him feel just a little bit rebellious. Just a little bit dangerous. 

He’s been in uniform since his Liberty started, but today is not a day to hide behind the Army. He stares at his uniform hanging pressed and clean in the little hostel closet for long moments, before reaching past it.

He puts on chinos and a button down, his favorite blue tie and the softest, most luxurious thing he owns — a thin navy-blue sweater that had fit him perfectly when he’d bought it. Now, hard living has made it just a little snug in the shoulders, just a little loose in the waist, but still respectable, still attractive. It’s the most casual look he’s worn in years, maybe even since he went to the recruiter’s office, pale and scared and so sure of himself at seventeen. He feels not quite himself and completely himself.

He ruffles his hair a little, because he can, because there’s no room today for Captain Brewer. Because he wants David to look at his hair and imagine running his fingers through it.

“Be brave today,” Patrick whispers to his reflection, and watches the blush pink up over the apples of his cheeks. He sticks his tongue out at himself and grabs his jacket on his way out.

The cool chill of the early morning is settling now that the sun has risen, and Patrick suspects that there’ll be a touch of warmth in the afternoon. He parks his bike outside the small bistro he’s been frequenting during his leave, where they serve the most amazing cappuccino and the owner of the establishment, Monsieur Durand, doesn’t have a set menu. He cooks what he likes and puts it in front of you and you eat it, and it will be _delicious._ Patrick loves it because it reminds him of home, his parents cheerfully bickering while Mom fried the bacon and Dad did the washing up, Connie and Conner underfoot as Patrick fed Arthur his porridge. 

It hurts, as it always does, to think of his little cousins being not so little now, with Arthur starting year 5 and Constance engaged, Connor playing quarterback for the high school’s football team. He writes to them all the time, but he hasn’t seen any of his family in almost six years, since the war began, and it has begun to wear him thin. 

He sips his coffee and lets himself think, not for the first time, about getting out. He’ll have done ten years this coming January. For the past three years he’s played a waiting game. 

_If I live to next year, I’ll drop my papers_ , he’d thought, the night Lord Mountbatten laid out his plans for Dieppe, despite the vehement protests of General Montgomery, Colonel Daniels, and Patrick himself. That was the first night he’d spent in a holding cell for insubordination, and his first black mark, so angry he couldn’t stop shivering, the lives of five thousand of his countrymen slipping through his fingers.

 _Eighteen months and I’ll drop my papers. I just have to make it through eighteen more months,_ he’d thought, when General Tremblay requested him specifically for his team during the development of the Transport Plan, the push to cut off the German communications infrastructure of northern France.

 _I can’t do this anymore_ , he’d thought, choking on pain and blood the night he was shot. He’d reported to his commanding officers the minute they’d let him out of the med bay, and had the sentence half way out of his mouth before Tremblay held up a hand and cut him off, slid him a stack of new paperwork and new orders. The Allied forces were close to breaking the front, and it had been decided that Patrick’s talents would be better served in a different capacity. Patrick had heard rumors of the new unit put together by the American’s, men whose job it had become to track down some of the greatest treasures of the artistic world, stolen and smuggled in the chaos of war, and return them to where they began. His country is asking him to do something similar, to aid those most harmed by the Reich to reclaim those works of art and history stolen from them, insult to unforgivable injury.

And Patrick has suffered every single moment of the past six years, and he doesn’t know how much more suffering he can withstand. He can’t imagine another ten years in the Army, being shipped out to god-knows-where, but this? The chance to do more, to be a part of an even bigger legacy, it tugs at him, at the keystone of who he is, shakes the branch of the family tree on which he stands. So he keeps his resignation papers, takes the new assignment, secures his pass for seven days of Liberty in Paris.

And now this. This thing with David. It’s dangerous and it’s good and it’s _everything_ , and Patrick feels an ache run through him, sparking low in his gut. The last two days have been a revelation to him, as if someone has taken him by the hand and shown him a path forward he never would have found on his own, a path that’s been waiting for him all this time. 

He can’t recall ever feeling excitement like this, except when he was very young, when it was just him and Mom and Grandad. He was so little, four or five at most, and they were going to go see fireworks for Independence Day. Grandad had come to visit because Dad was far away, and Mom said that sometimes they needed a man’s help around the farm. Grandad had been so tall and so serious, and Patrick was a little bit scared of him, but that night he’d put Patrick up up up on his shoulders and Patrick had felt like he was flying, like he could reach up and touch the fireworks as they exploded in the dark. Every time he’d giggled Grandad had laughed too, and the warmth of that memory sits low and deep inside of him.

That same excitement burns inside of him, filling him up. He doesn’t know how to feel about that, how to unpack it in parts he can understand. Maybe it isn’t for him to understand, just to feel.

Monsieur Duran brings him an almond croissant, light as air, with the most absurdly delicious fresh butter and strawberry jam. Patrick gazes up at him and says, “Run away with me.”

Monsieur Duran throws his head back with laughter, and despite the language barrier, Patrick thinks he’s understood. 

It’s obscene, how delicious this croissant is. Patrick wants to do nothing but eat these almond croissants for the rest of his natural life, and he wants to bring David here, wants to show him how good fresh simple food can be in the right environment, made by someone with a passion for it. He finishes it far faster than he intends to, but it’s nearly nine thirty and he still has to find the Gaston. He doesn’t leave a single bite on the plate, though he stops himself from licking up the crumbs. Just.

As he’s leaving, the little old man presses a small paper bag into his hands with a second croissant, and Patrick beams at him and says, “ _Merci beaucoup_ ,” in horrendous French, but it just makes Monsieur Duran smile even brighter, so he thinks maybe it wasn’t half bad. 

Full and just a little bit in love with the world, he shrugs into his jacket and starts the bike up, tugging the helmet strap down under his chin. He’s got a second one strapped to the back of his bike, and as he turns the ignition and the bike purrs under him, he lets himself imagine for just a second what the rest of his day is going to entail.

He smiles, and pulls the bike out into traffic. 

*

The Gaston is on the Champs-Élysées avenue, because of course it is. Patrick has driven past countless times without noticing over the past day, another white brick facade with glowing carpark and red velvet awning, where a sleek black limousine is parked and waiting for its riders. An older lady in a head-to-toe white fur coat is just coming out, accompanied by a gentleman in a daysuit of the most handsome gray Patrick has ever seen. A bellhop in red brocade is helping another guest with their luggage, while another holds the door open for him and smiles, welcoming him to the Gaston. Patrick feels something in him shrivel up and die at how elegant and refined this place is, and how elegant and refined he isn’t.

The grand entry is a sight to behold. It’s been shined up like a new penny, though here and there Patrick can see the mark of occupation and war on the elegant wallpaper, the thick rugs underfoot. It reminds him a little of the _Oclaire_ , the night they drove the German front back and lost twenty-two hundred men in the process. In the middle of that gorgeous village there’d been a hotel, not quite like this one, though similar enough in age and majesty. It had been a burnt out husk when they came on it, a jewel tarnished and ransacked, but the old marble stairs had held history, the thick rugs had served as beds for the dead and dying, and the opulent dining room had been as good a surgical suite as any. 

He thinks of the _Oclaire_ in that moment, and wonders at the civilians in immaculate, expensive frocks and seersucker suits, the high heels and silver pocket watches, as they pass him to start their day outside of the Gaston’s walls. 

“You said ten,” says a voice, and Patrick turns around to look.

David is smiling from the base of the massive curved stairwell, and he instantly, completely, takes Patrick’s breath away. He’s wearing a… a librarian’s cardigan, in a rich, thick black wool, with white gypsophila flowers in artistic arrangements embroidered down each breast. The white button-down collared shirt underneath has the same floral pattern in white at the collar, down the line of buttons. His trousers are two inches short in the leg, and he’s wearing black dress shoes without socks, ankles on display. He’s outrageous but somehow absolutely stylish, dancing along a line that he seems to cross depending on who is looking at him. His hair is in its big wave, and he has a pair of sunglasses hooked in a vee at his neck, and he’s smiling something soft and winsome and just a little shy. He’s simply the most beautiful thing Patrick has ever seen in his entire life.

“Hi,” he says, when David sways to a stop in front of him. He smells like something woodsy and warm, like taking a walk along a forest trail after a rainstorm. The urge to lean in to catch a deeper breath of that scent is almost unbearable. When David offers his hand, Patrick clasps it like a man drowning. His skin tingles everywhere they touch. Everywhere David kissed last night, wrist to fingertip.

“Hi,” David says. They shake for a beat too long before Patrick crams his hands into his pockets. Better to hide the way they’re shaking.

“You look, uh. You look really nice.”

“Thank you, so do you,” David says, and his smile goes just a little sweet, just a little bashful. “You’re also looking far more awake than is healthy at, my God, nine-forty-five in the morning.”

“I've been up since four,” Patrick says, and he’s glad for the change in his pocket to keep his trembling hands busy. “I couldn’t sleep. I’ve — I’ve been thinking about. Last night.”

David nods along for a fraction of a moment, studying him, before visibly bracing himself. “Regrets?”

“What? No. Why would I have regrets?”

“It’s become something of a habit to ask,” David says, a self-deprecating smile caught in the corner of his mouth. “I was going to apologize to you today.”

“People only apologize when they’re sorry for something, and I don’t think you’re sorry.” This isn’t the right venue for this, it wasn’t what he meant to say at all, _he is the opposite of suave_. “Neither am I.”

“No?” 

“No,” Patrick says, and chances a look at him. David is silhouetted in the morning sunlight and so beautiful it hurts to look at him directly, at the kindness in his face, at the little smile playing around his mouth. “It feels like — like a weight has been lifted. A weight I didn’t even know was there. Does that make sense?”

David’s face softens, and he nods. “It does.”

“This — it’s new. For me.”

“I gathered,” and David’s expression is so warm, like caring personified. “The great thing about new things is getting to share them with someone else.”

Patrick can’t help but smile. “Are you going to share it with me, David?”

“If you’ll let me.” 

It’s a promise, one man to another. It’s so much more than that. Patrick feels caught in the web of that feeling, but he isn’t fighting it. He wants to revel in it, wrap himself in it. They stare at each other for too long, Patrick drowning in the dark of David’s eyes, until a sharp peal of laughter from a woman at the concierge desk startles them out of their reverie. 

David smiles, almost self-consciously. “So,” he says, as they turn to walk together towards the exit. “Where are we headed?”

“It’s a surprise,” Patrick says, and can’t help but laugh when David’s nose wrinkles. “What? Not a fan of surprises?”

“Not especially, no,” David says, as they step out into the Paris morning. It’s a little cool for the sweater David is wearing, but the day promises to warm up. “Remind me to tell you about the time Katherine Hepburn showed up unexpectedly during wig fumigation week at our family’s home in Connectic — what the hell is this?”

Patrick leans over the seat of his bike to unlatch the two helmets from the saddlebags. “My bike?”

“Your what now.”

“My bike,” Patrick says, smiling, and tosses David the second helmet. “Are you going to be warm enough?”

David looks around him, at the clear blue sky, the soft puff of clouds that move on the cool gentle breeze. “It’s going to be beautiful today, and I’m going to need us to circle back around to this issue of the bike. As in, a _motor_ bike?”

“Well, you didn’t strike me as the pedaling type.”

“And yet somehow I struck you as the death wish type instead?”

Patrick laughs at that one, shaking his second helmet again in David’s direction. David takes it like Patrick has offered him a used handkerchief instead, the chin strap held between his thumb and index finger. “You’ll be fine, David.”

“Oh, I know I will be, because I’m not getting on the bike.”

“I’m afraid where we’re going is going to be an _awfully_ far walk.”

“And where are we going?”

Patrick opens his mouth to answer and then clicks it shut, raising his eyebrow and grinning at David. “Ah ah ah, that part’s still a surprise, I’m afraid.”

Patrick buckles the strap of his helmet underneath his chin so that he’s got something to do with his hands, and then swings a leg over the seat, feeling the solidity of the bike heavy between his thighs. He slips the key into the ignition but doesn’t turn the bike on, lifting his eyes to David’s in enough time to see David tracing the line of Patrick’s thigh where it hugs close to the black metal, the curve of his hip as he sits back into the seat, before David meets Patrick’s eye again and shakes his head.

“No, I’m sorry, no! I didn’t survive sailing halfway around the world to die on a hairpin curve in the Parisian countryside.”

“I don’t think Paris is _technically_ halfway around—”

“Patrick!” David practically screeches at him, his voice a bubbling mix of exasperation and endeared frustration and, under it all, the thinnest, crackling layer of fear. 

“You asked me to trust you last night — let this be my turn to ask you to do the same?”

David gulps and Patrick watches the movement of his throat and wants to trace it with the pad of his thumb. David catches his lower lip between his teeth and looks from the bike, to Patrick’s face, back to the bike. “For the record, asking you to trust me with a dinner order feels a touch different than you asking me to trust you with my life.”

“Oh, I don’t know. Trying new things can always be a little dangerous, no matter how you slice the cake, right?”

He’s looking at Patrick like they’re not talking about dinner and motorcycles anymore. David is taking the helmet in his hands and trying to find a way to put it on his head without flattening his hair at all. “For the record, I would’ve appreciated knowing there was going to be headgear in the plans for today, it would have saved me at least half an hour this morning.”

“That seems like an underestimation,” Patrick mutters, delighting in David’s glare at him as he manages to position the helmet to his liking before pulling on the hem of his sweater and the cuffs of his sleeves and stepping up close to the bike. “My apologies. I promise to provide ample warning if our planned activities require any extra protective gear.” He hears it as soon as he says it, and his cheeks begin to warm in a way that has little to do with the spring sunshine. 

“See that you do,” David says, his tone clipped but his eyes practically dancing and — it feels good, to talk to someone like this. Patrick’s not used to talking to people who don’t speak back to him like he’s in charge, usually because he _is_ in charge in so many of the circles he enters. But with David, he’s able to be fast, and witty, and he doesn’t think everything through three times before he lets the words come tumbling out of his mouth. It’s reckless, and thrilling, and absolutely the most fun he’s had in longer than he can remember.

David is still just standing on the sidewalk, though, looking at the narrow space on the back of the bike. Patrick glances over his shoulder and remembers bike rides through the countryside with Rachel, how close together two bodies have to be to occupy a space only meant for one. And this time when he speaks, there’s a heat there that replaces the humor. “You will have to get _on_ the bike, you know. I don’t bite.”

David smiles and nods, maybe a bit too emphatically. “I know that. I just. Was trying to figure out the most graceful way to make my ingress.”

“I’m afraid ‘graceful’ and ‘motorcycle’ rarely go hand in hand.”

“So you see my concern, then.”

Patrick laughs and shifts his weight in the seat, sliding a fraction of an inch further forward. “I promise it’s going to be worth it.”

David looks from him, to the motorcycle, to him again, and comes to a decision. Suddenly, as if his courage will fail him otherwise, he sets a hand at Patrick’s shoulder and swings a leg over the bike, sliding into the seat behind him. Patrick only has a second to think about just how long those legs are before they’re pressed together, shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, thigh to thigh, and it so overwhelms him it takes a moment to catch his breath. David is a huge presence behind him, and his fingers scrabble at his sides before looping tightly around his waist, hissing, “The choices you make, David Rose,” which makes Patrick laugh. He turns his head just slightly and David ducks around to glare at him. “I’m on.”

“With a minimum of flailing — I’m impressed.”

David pinches his waist and Patrick considers it a job well done. He turns the key and the engine comes to life with a roar. He thinks he feels the ghost of David’s mouth on his shoulder, but when he turns to look David is smiling, self-effacing and beautiful. “Ready?”

“No,” David says, laughter in his voice that’s directed as much at himself as it is at Patrick.

“Hang on tight,” Patrick says, and David’s whoop gets lost in the air as Patrick pulls out into traffic.

*

The air that whips past them on the motorcycle is cold enough that Patrick’s glad he’s got his jacket wrapped around him, the thin blue cashmere surprisingly warm in the early morning spring. They slow and lean into a turn, and Patrick almost manages to convince himself that David’s hand press harder into the soft skin above his belly button, that the dip of his chin presses a little more sharply as he inhales and holds his breath until they straighten out and his hands fall back to Patrick’s hips, where the parabola of his palms mold to Patrick’s body with a familiarity that echoes through Patrick. 

He’s counting left turns, waiting for the third one past the small stone church outside town — if he hits the section of bombed-out wall that still contains an ivy-covered archway, he’s gone too far according to Giovanni. But he’s having a hard time counting, with the whistle of wind in his ears and the feeling of David’s chest moving against his back, the rhythm of his breathing shifting with every gear change. They almost miss it, but Patrick manages to slow in time and turn down the line seemingly cut through the wheat fields on a whim, a slash across the land that’s at once stark and purposeful. It winds parallel to the city, but they’ve been on the bike for nearly an hour and it feels like they’ve entered an entirely different world. 

All around them, the world is breaking into bright, riotous color, vibrant emeralds and deep sages that wind around each other into the topography of forests and vineyards, the peaks and flats of a country reborn after the chills of winter and the artificial frigidity of war. Small clumps of yellow flowers dot the sides of the road they ride down, low-sitting copse of heather and clover that look impossibly soft to the touch as they go zipping down the road. 

Patrick feels an itching in his bones to just keep driving, to take the bike as far as can, until the gas runs out, and even then, to keep walking it until the tires are worn through to nothing. He’s thousands of miles from home and living a life that, in increments, has become something he doesn’t ever remember dreaming about or longing for, and yet when he lets his eyes drift closed for a beat longer than they should, and tilts his face to the bright, warm sun in the same clear blue sky that stands over the rest of the world in turn — he feels like maybe he could call this a kind of home, too. This feeling.

David shivers behind him and presses their bodies infinitesimally closer together, and Patrick smiles to himself as the stone church he’s been looking for finally comes into view on the horizon. He leans his body back into David’s, so that they’re leaning against each other as they barrel down the road towards the town of Bougival. 

Patrick’s been meaning to come here for years, the last several times he’s been to Paris. He’d always thought the French countryside was beautiful. Even walking across it, stranded with his men and seeing danger around every charming fence post, every paint-chipped windmill, Patrick can remember wishing he’d seen it in different circumstances. The little villages were meant to be enjoyed, markets idled through, flowers picked. Even then, corpses littering the lush green landscape and smoke billowing from destroyed churches and schools, he’d wished for better and brighter days, to get the chance to see this beautiful landscape the way it was meant to be seen. That he’s somehow found his way to the other side is a blessing he won’t ignore. 

The bike cruises down the main boulevard, the Seine on one side and the increasingly busy stretch of downtown on the other. Patrick slows the bike, his eyes drawn with increasing frequency to the townsfolk walking the sidewalks, the clusters of families, single individuals trailing small dogs on thin leashes, little bundles of former military men clustered in front of the bar and barbershop — identifiable by the steel-straight spines even as they lounge against doorways or lean back in chairs. Patrick feels it along the length of his own spine, the rigidity he hasn’t found a way to be rid of, no matter how many days he spends away from the suffocating structure that’s come to define his life. 

There’s a small space just down from where Patrick had been hoping to start this little adventure, and he counts it amongst the signs that the universe, and whatever powers might still be interested in controlling it, are on his side today.

He pulls the bike gently up to the curb and turns off the ignition, slipping the key securely into his pocket and unsnapping his helmet, rolling his shoulders back with a long exhale, willing the tightness across his shoulders to loosen. He pulls one leg carefully up and over the bike with a groan, bracing his hands at his lower back and leaning back slightly. When he stands back up, David is looking at him with a crooked little smile and Patrick just shrugs and rubs a hand along the back of his neck. 

David keeps the wry smile on his face until he stands and tries to take a step away from the bike, when he stumbles on legs that don’t seem to be cooperating like he’s used to. Patrick takes a quick step forward, arm out to brace against the flat of David’s chest to keep him from tumbling to the ground, but he’s a man of many talents, so a laugh escapes his lips at the same time.

“Oh my God!” David says, true surprise in his voice as he stands and pulls at the hem of his cardigan, glancing around to make sure no one saw his less than elegant maneuvering, while at the same time wincing and rubbing gently along his inner thighs. Patrick can’t stop watching David’s hand, pressing into the soft skin at the inside of his knee, hissing in pain as he trails it up the inside of his thigh. The other hand is working soft circles into the muscles of his lower back, and Patrick shoves his fists into his pockets to keep from reaching out and joining it, digging the pads of his fingers into the knots of muscle he already knows he’d find. 

“Yeah, sorry. I should have warned you — your first time on a bike can be a little rough.”

“Who says it’s my first time?”

Patrick doesn’t laugh, but only just. “The look on your face, actually. And the way you’re standing.”

David glares at him. “My knees will never be the same.”

“They’ll be fine once you work them a little. If I promise you there’s food, do you think you can manage to walk a bit?”

“What am I, a dog? I’m capable of doing things for more than food,” David says with an injured sniff. Patrick swallows, smallest shred of guilt creeping up the back of his throat. 

“I have no doubt you’re capable of a great many things, David, most of which don’t involve food,” Patrick says, his voice low. “However, in the small amount of time I’ve known you, it does seem the most...expeditious way to motivate you, and as this is technically only a day trip, I thought expeditious might be our best course of action.”

David’s face is painted with something that might be most generously called a blush, and he’s looking at Patrick like he wants to kick him in the shins and press his face into his neck at the same time. “You have now called me both a flirt and a glutton in a single twenty-four-hour period.”

“My mother raised an observant boy,” Patrick says, and grins at David’s squawk of outrage, reaching out to help him unsnap his helmet. “I wouldn’t have dragged you out here if I didn’t think it would be worth it.”

David’s hair is a flattened mess and he runs his fingers through it, more agitated than Patrick would have expected. He’s ruffled, badly so. David is the kind of man who needs to be ruffled once in a while, Patrick is realizing, if only to break him of the malaise that seems to follow him like a black cloud. He snaps the two helmets to his saddle bag, as David smooths his hair and tries not to look as annoyed as he clearly is. “You look great.”

“You’re sweet,” David says, sarcastically, and Patrick has the unbearable urge to tug on his pigtails. Patrick slips his leather coat off and folds it carefully, tucking it into one of the saddlebags and rolling his shoulders, turning in time to catch David’s eyes trailing the line of his shoulders. “You said something about food.”

Patrick nods, his face a mockery of graveness, and he extends a hand down the road, palm up. “After you, sir.” David starts walking and Patrick falls into step next to him, a mirror of their walk the night before, the air between them crackling with a new kind of clarity, a new strength of purpose. Last night had been the darkened glass of a wine bottle and this new thing between them rattles and shines like Viennese crystal. 

It’s a short enough walk to the food that they can already smell it, and still Patrick’s a little sad when it’s such a short walk, he’s so enjoying watching the dappled sunlight play with the brown-black strands of David’s hair, making a study of the cut of his jaw in the bright light of day. He’s just now realizing that this is the first time he’s seen David before happy hour, and it’s like seeing a different person, the opposite of Peter Pan’s shadow. This David carries himself with the same broad shoulders and surety of step, but there’s a reserve that isn’t there once the sun sets, and it makes him feel more...familiar in a way. Like the kind of men that Patrick grew up surrounded by, and learned how to navigate around.

The village is the kind of stunning that Patrick has come to expect in France. The war has been here, in the pockmarks on the centuries-old architecture, the singed edges of thatched roofs, but the bright red doors, white stucco and cobblestone streets underfoot are as warm and welcoming as any French village can be. Modernity has touched Bougival as it has touched them all, and war has done more than that, but there’s a tentativeness in the air that Patrick admires, because with it is strength. They’re rebuilding even now, and the town square is thriving, and he watches some of the annoyance bleed from David’s face when he sees where they’re going. 

The war had shuttered many of the businesses, but a few still yet remained. Giovanni had raved about Brasserie le Clemenceau, one of the oldest restaurants left in the area still operating. The Germans had closed the majority of restaurants in France by choking the supply chain, but somehow this plucky little place had remained open. Likely because they offered a lunchtime selection of French street food served on their patio, the kind of rustic, home-grown fair Patrick had grown up eating.

A part of him had expected David to balk, but if the last two days have taught Patrick anything, it’s that the way to David’s heart was through his stomach. The man was obviously a connoisseur of the finer things in life, but Patrick knows there’s an adventurous streak in him a mile wide, focused in and around and about food.

There’s a small chalk sign propped against the outside of the whitewashed facade of the building, next to a grey and white cat who seems perfectly content to sleep wrapped around the leg of the sign. 

“So, David, what’ll it be,” Patrick says, gesturing to the sign. “Jambon beurre? The merguez is supposed to be absolutely delicious here,” he says, parroting back one of the last things Giovanni had said to him that morning. 

“Crepes,” David says, his voice almost a whisper, the look in his eyes damn near reverent. Patrick wraps his lips over his teeth and tries to keep his eyes from slipping into too much fondness. He tries with every passing second to temper his feelings, to remind himself of the calendar days left before an entire battalion of men will be waiting for him to report back and check in, but. All he can manage to do is the quick mental math that tells him he’s fallen far too far in the last forty-eight hours. 

“Are you sure? Maybe the liver sandwich.”

“Someone’s ancient grandmother is back there making crepes,” David says, without taking his eyes off the waiter standing at a small table in front of the closed restaurant, taking an order from an older couple. “She probably smuggled the starter under her skirts while escaping Paris during the French Revolution, and has been making crepe dough from it ever since.”

Patrick was raised to be a gentleman, but it takes everything in him not to laugh out loud. “Does she still wear her beret?”

“Viva la revolución,” David says, and beams at the waiter as the elderly couple shuffle to wait near the tidy, white little picket fence surrounding the quaint little restaurant. He orders for them in rapid-fire French, and Patrick has no idea at all what he’s going to be eating this afternoon, but he decides that it’s going to be an adventure. He hears _chocolat_ and _pâte feuilletée_ and is satisfied.

There’s a queue starting behind them, and they clearly got to town at exactly the right time. The market is starting to fill with shoppers going about their business, picking up midday bread for that night’s supper, flowers for a sweetheart they’ve scorned, pain medication from the apothecary. It’s a quaint little village, warm and friendly, and Patrick is once more awed by the resilience of people. Children are playing in the street chasing chickens, and men linger in doorways, smoking pipes and chatting. Ladies are gathered in groups with babies in baskets, and the elderly are taking an early afternoon stroll. Bougival is bright and alive and Patrick is so, so glad he thought of this, that he’s brought David here.

He turns to say so and catches David already looking at him. There’s something strange on his face, something just a little tender, and Patrick can’t help a smile. “What?”

“You like this place.”

“I do.”

“Does it remind you of home?”

A kind question, from a man who’d proven he was listening to everything Patrick said, as much as he heard everything Patrick didn’t. “A little. The way people are with each other. Kind, you know?”

“No,” David says, with a helpless sort of sound. “I grew up in Boston, New York City, Philadelphia. People are as likely to spit on you as smile. And that was even before I went to boarding school.”

“Boarding school?”

“For five years,” David says, and crosses his arms over his chest. He doesn’t seem to have noticed the looks he’s been getting since they arrived. David bears a strong resemblance to Cary Grant, from the dark hair to the strong jaw to the bow of his lips, and he dresses like a movie star, like he just came offset and got on a plane from Hollywood because he was peckish for French crepes made by a grandmother so old she’d stormed the Bastille. He’s outrageously gorgeous and completely out of place, and Patrick feels a warm sort of pride settle over him, startling though it may be, that this man has chosen to spend his day with him. “I didn’t hate every second of it. Just nearly every second of it.”

“Was it overseas?”

“Thankfully, no. Oh,” and David literally turns in a circle because the waiter has brought out the older couple’s food already, something delicious and wrapped in wax paper that smells like perfection personified. 

Patrick’s stomach grumbles with embarrassing loudness, and David grins. Patrick’s timing is, as always, impeccable, because it’s at that moment that the waiter behind the counter calls for “Monsieur Rose” and Patrick hops to his feet before David gets the chance to, snaking between the small rattan tables to the counter that lines the far left side of the restaurant, where an elderly woman in a beret is standing with two large baskets in her hands, the paper lining them thin and crinkly and dusted with powdered sugar. She passes them to Patrick with a gummy smile and Patrick dips his chin in thanks.

“Oh my God,” David says when Patrick slides back into his seat and slips one of the baskets in front of David. The crepe inside is a pale yellow where it missed the griddle, the golden-brown spots blanching somewhat under the heap of powdered sugar that covers both. The tart smell of lemon is detectable from where they sit, and that’s not accounting for the small pyramid of puff pastry that sit in the corner of each basket, the small holes in the side bursting with a dark chocolate that David immediately gets all over his fingers when he plucks one up and shoves the entire thing into his mouth in a single bite. Patrick has never seen anything more adorable in his entire life than all that unguarded pleasure on David’s handsome face.

David’s eyes drift shut and his tongue laps out to the corners of his mouth to scoop up any stray bits of chocolate that escaped his first bite, and the sound he makes in his chest is so deeply animalistic, so unguarded and appreciative that Patrick can’t resist leaning forward and plucking a creme puff off the pile in David’s basket, just to watch his eyes dance, watch the way his mouth folds into a tender thing made of censure, rimmed in joy. 

In retaliation, David reaches out a set of slender fingers and grabs another puff pastry from Patrick’s plate, dipping it into the powdered sugar and catching Patrick’s eye as he sucked a stray dusting of the sweet powder off his thumb in the process. Patrick swallows thickly and looks down at his own plate, picking up the delicately folded crepe and lifting the entire thing to his mouth before he catches the horrified look on David’s plate. 

“It’s not a sandwich,” he says, his voice full of laughter, and Patrick watches him peel off the still crispy edge of the crepe and fold it in on itself before he eats it. He raises an eyebrow at Patrick, who copies his motion and tries not to let actual drool drip out of his mouth when the combination of tangy lemon and sugar explode across the back of his tongue. The crepes are light, and almost disappear the minute he goes to chew them, but that just makes him want another piece, and another, until the next thing he knows his basket is empty, and so is David’s, and all that’s left is the slightly greasy waxed paper and a small pile of sugar Patrick is having to stop himself from scooping up with a finger. 

David’s looking back and forth between the two baskets, like he’s hoping to magically make more food appear, but alas. All the enthusiasm in the world isn’t enough to refill their baskets, and as much as Patrick’s dying for a second order himself, they’re burning daylight already. 

“Shall we, David?”

David looks so sad, Patrick can’t help but laugh and placate him with promises of more crepes, somewhere, sometime, yes even here if that’s what he wants. It doesn’t quite put a smile on David’s face, but it does get him standing as Patrick places a small stack of bills in the middle of the table and winks at the elderly lady behind the counter on their way out. She presses a kiss to her fingertips and smiles after them and Patrick misses his grandmother with a longing so sharp it cuts at him. 

“So. Patrick.” David glances at him quickly. “As delicious as those were, I’m assuming we didn’t risk death and dismemberment just to eat crepes?”

“Death and dismemberment,” Patrick mutters under his breath as they come to the corner of the street. “It’s a bike, David, not a ballistic tank.”

David doesn’t say anything, knocking their shoulders together playfully until they reach the far side of the street and realize exactly where it is they’re heading. 

A dozen feet from the corner, a set of stone steps begins to zigzag down towards the bank of the canal, the steps worn through and dark in the middle, where countless feet have tread them bare. David looks over the side of the wall at the small queue at the bottom, the wooden bottomed boats that waits to putter their passengers across the offshoot of the Seine to the island across. “Where exactly are we going?” David asks.

“It’s a surprise,” Patrick says, and tugs him down the steps and across, to where the bridge intersects with the staircase. Moss has poked its way through the slabs of stone, daisies here and there blowing in the breeze coming off the water. The Seine stretches out dark and radiant, sunlight catching the waves that patter gently up against the transport ferries that are taking people across the island. The Maréchal de Lattre de Tassigny Bridge is crisscrossed with repair crossbars and caution tape, but the majority of the bridge has been reopened for traffic, sturdy and strong underfoot. The locals cross it with buggies and carts, bikes and prams, and Patrick makes a point to let David walk closest to the middle, so he doesn’t have to look at the water if he doesn’t want to. He can’t do anything about the sound of the water under them as it passes in gentle waves made by the ferry boats, though. When he glances at David, he finds those dark eyes on him already, with that funny expression in them again.

“What?”

“Nothing,” David says quietly, and lets their shoulders bump again, and Patrick is an observant man — he’s had to be, to keep himself and a great many other people alive. Even now, when the stakes couldn’t be lower to anyone but himself, he can still see the pieces of the puzzle slowly piecing together in front of him. David’s body dips close to his again, the fabric of his sweater sliding against the creased leather of Patrick’s coat, and this time Patrick reaches out a hand and wraps it around David’s.

Without missing a beat, David’s fingers find their home nestled in-between Patrick’s, and Patrick smiles and pulls their joined hands close to his thigh. It doesn’t even occur to him at first to look around for knowing eyes, for glances that look away faster than they should under an unassuming air. He just lets David’s warm hand rest inside his as the sun overhead sparkles off the river and the island spreads out in front of them in a floating mass of verdant, reckless life. 

“This is. Really beautiful, Patrick. Thank you for bringing me here,” David says as they hit the halfway point of the bridge, skirting around a small group of children, hand-in-hand in pairs, their school uniforms a deep navy blue against the pale white stone of the bridge.

“You never finished telling me about boarding school.”

“Ah. What’s to tell.” David says it like he’s got a great number of stories to tell.

“What did you study?”

“Nothing.”

“Must have made for an easy curriculum.” 

That gets a laugh out of David, a feat Patrick is finding easier and easier to accomplish, and every time a rush of pride fills his chest. “It was...my early years of schooling we primarily made of unfortunate haircuts and truly a debaucherous social life, I’m afraid.”

“I wonder what would have happened if you and I had met in those younger days,” Patrick muses, a picture of himself in secondary school filling his mind, all elbows and ruddy cheeks and the blind optimism of youth paving the path ahead of him. 

“Oh, I think our paths have crossed at just the right time, Captain Brewer,” David almost purrs, and Patrick has never heard his rank sound so...thrilling, coming out of the mouth of another human being. “I was a mess back then, though the situation hardly improved at University.”

Patrick joined the military so young, but even if he hadn’t, he doubts there would have been money for him to go to University. As much as he’d loved school, there had only ever been one path forward for him. “Where did you go?”

“Here and there. I finished my degree in Boston,” David says, his hand warm in Patrick’s. It’s profound, what he feels gazing at David in the early afternoon light of this little French village, the way the light plays on his skin and pulls out the auburn streaks in his dark hair. 

David falters, for just a moment, as they finally approach the mouth of the bridge on the other side. He studies the brick work of the tall building before them, the meandering path of the street. “I was an art major,” he says, faintly.

“I’m surprised you haven’t realized where we are then,” Patrick says, and is humbled at the expression of joyful pleasure, the purest he’s ever seen on another person’s face. David tries to hide it, embarrassed, but the smile is tugging on his mouth and won’t let go. He rolls his eyes, but it’s not enough to hide the glint of enthusiasm, the sparkle of unbridled excitement.

“Of course,” he says to himself before following it with a much louder, “what a tourist trap!” like he isn’t a little bit like a kid at Christmas, like he isn’t tugging Patrick forward a little faster. “The Impressionist’s Walk? How gauche.”

“I don’t think they painted with opaque watercolors, David.”

David turns to him, laughing. “A play on words? Really? How do you even know what gouache is?”

Patrick dips his head demurely. “I’m a man of many hidden talents and a wealth of knowledge on topics ranging the gamut.”

“You know, I think you might just be.” He’s not hesitating anymore, pulling Patrick forward as they finish crossing the bridge, David’s eyes scanning the bank and the horizon until he stops dead and pulls them both up short, Patrick practically crashing into him at the sudden stop. 

“David, what —” 

“There. Look. _Le Pont de Bougival,_ ” David says breathlessly, pointing, and Patrick isn’t sure what he’s looking at, but his vision fills with the joy on David’s face and decides whatever put it there has to be one of the most beautiful things in the world. David twists in place, his body following his eyes as it scans the bank and then he angles his body and points again. “And I’m pretty sure that’s the view from _Bords de Seine_ by Morisot right there. It’s sort of hard to tell, with the damage to the bridge, but…” he trails off and rubs a hand absentmindedly along his jaw and, oh. To be that hand at all hours of the day.

“I have to be honest, David — I don’t have any idea what any of that means.”

“It’s, they’re. Impressionists. Paintings. Some of the best artists in the movement came here to paint the locks, and the river.”

“I’d heard rumor,” Patrick teases as he and David begin to walk along the tree line, much more slowly than they had in their exit off the bridge. It’s almost as if, now that he’s proved to himself that they are where he thought, David’s finally free to take his time and. Well. Patrick isn’t in any rush. “Do you like the Impressionists?”

“A great deal more than I should for someone with allegedly refined tastes,” David says quickly.

“The Impressionists aren’t refined?”

“Quite literally? Not in the slightest, but. It’s more than that. It’s — it’s that they’re easy, if that makes sense. The simple choices, and I am used to being around people who expect...more than simplicity.”

“Even if simplicity is what you like?”

“Especially then, I’m afraid.”

“What is it about them that you do like?”

“They’re. Well. Have you ever _seen_ a Monet? Or a Turnery, or a Sissley?”

“I went to the Louvre on my last Liberty,” Patrick says unhelpfully.

“Well then it’s. It’s like this absolute riot of color, and up close it’s too much for your eyes to take in, yes? So it looks like this mess, this chaos, this big cock-up of blotches and streaks and like it couldn’t ever be anything like a picture. Until you take a step back. And then another one, and another one, and sometimes you have to put so much space between you it feels lonely, but then — there’s a picture where there wasn’t one before, and it’s. It’s like a magic trick.”

And it’s perhaps the most words David has ever said to him in a row, and Patrick’s just staring at him because he’s never seen David quite like this. And he hasn’t known the man long, but he’s known him long enough to think that maybe — maybe that’s because David doesn’t get quite like this very often. Patrick has seen him teasing, and enticing, and brash, but he’s never seen him excited. Thrilled. Happy, if Patrick was a betting man. That Patrick was the one to give him this happiness _intoxicating._ If he could spend the rest of his days making David smile just like that, he’d die a very happy man.

 _You want to spend your life with him_ , something quiet and new murmurs from deep within, and Patrick lets that simple truth settle over him. It doesn’t weigh him down, like things with Rachel had; there’s no dread like a ball of wax caught in his throat, no fear tense at the base of his spine. In its place is _warmth_ and a surety of self, as if he’s waited twenty-eight years to meet this version of himself, this man who recognizes the things he wants and is brave enough to lean forward and take them. He’s holding this beautiful man’s hand in this beautiful little town and _no one cares_. The freedom of that is breathtaking.

It’s the happiest day of his entire life. 

Patrick will be in Italy next week, where the Allied forces would be pushing a massive counter strike against the German defense. Patrick’s unit had been temporarily absorbed into the U.S. Eighth Army, and Command was expecting a high casualty rate, as much as forty percent. There’s a strong possibility that Patrick won’t live to see the end of the month. It all seems so far away, hand in hand with David, gazing at his animated face as he drags Patrick down the avenue towards a squat little house in a copse of trees. So far away, as David turns in a circle, hand at Patrick’s shoulder as he spins, as he exclaims over the view from the doorway where Sisley had painted _Barges on the Seine_ from the entryway of his home. The joy on his face is transformative, illuminating the person he truly is, the person hiding just below the surface. The person Patrick is slowly, irrevocably, falling in love with.

The thought doesn’t bring fear with it. How could he possibly be afraid, when David is all but squirming with glee, when he’s pulling Patrick down the road and exclaiming over the long, shallow expanse of the river? Patrick leans into the joy, feels his chest expanding and his shoulders loosening as David points across the narrow stretch of river, drags his hand through the dappled light streaming through the trees, takes the time to explain the concepts of contrast, and value, and tone to Patrick. He speaks art like he’s fluent in it, and Patrick finds himself swept along in the ebb and flow of it all for so long, he’s legitimately surprised when they come to the end of the island and the light has shifted to the latter side of afternoon. 

“I’m boring you,” David says when Patrick glances at his watch for the third time in as many minutes, and Patrick shakes his head with a shy smile.

“I’m not sure that’s possible. This has been — I’ve loved hearing you talk, David. This is the most I’ve ever heard you say.”

“I know, I know. It’s too much, you wouldn’t be the first person to tell me th—”

“— Stop. I _like_ that you like art, David. I’m never going to be upset that you talk about the things you like.”

“How is that possible?”

It’s said so quietly, almost an afterthought, but Patrick is no fool. In those four simple words he hears a life lived. It’s such an earnest confusion, that anyone would enjoy hearing David talk about things he enjoyed, and all the more heartbreaking for it. “You’re a fascinating man, David, and so smart. Who wouldn’t want to hear you talk?”

David flushes to the roots of his hair, and it is frankly the most attractive he’s ever looked. Patrick nudges his shoulder lightly with his. “I was trying to see if we were going to have enough time to stop in the little junk shop on our way back.”

“What?”

He’s so confused, like his mind is still tripping over Patrick’s simple compliment, and Patrick can’t help an amused little smile. “The little junk shop.”

“What in god’s creation is a _junk shop_?”

“You’ve never been in one?”

“Do they sell _garbage_?”

“No. Well, kind of,” and Patrick is laughing now, outright. “David. People who don’t want their things anymore — baseball cards, pots and pans — can donate them to junk shops, and those items are then sold second-hand.”

He watches the struggle cross David’s face — disgust, interest, fascination. “People just get _rid_ of their things, and then other people buy those things, and bring them home.”

“Not everyone can afford new.”

“Are they like consignment shops?”

“Yes, though after the Depression not as much in my experience,” Patrick says, as they take a turn back towards the little shop. It’s a way down the path, and Patrick again makes certain to stand closer to the water’s edge, allowing David the safety of the inner walkway. “Junk shops were really important, back home. Growing up, sometimes it was the only way my cousins and I would get shoes.”

It had been such a simple, innocent time. Barefoot and wild as mountain cats in the summer, then the pinching ache of leather shoes in the winter when school began again in earnest. Once, when Patrick was very young and his father was still serving in the first world war, there hadn’t been shoes at all, and Patrick had gone to school every day with newspaper and muslin wrapped around his feet. He can remember being so happy about it, even if the snow melted through the paper before he’d get home and wet his socks.

He finds David looking at him and smiles a bit. “There were hard times growing up. I think that’s why junk shops are so close to my heart. My mom and I would find so many treasures. She would buy dresses second hand and cut them up to make blouses and skirts for my little girl cousins. We’d get potato bags twenty for a penny, and she and I would spend weeks making rugs and wall hangings, to keep the winter air from seeping inside.” Even now the smell of burlap makes him think of the cold winter wind screaming outside, and he and his mom tucked inside their little single-bedroom farmhouse, warm as bugs. 

“You don’t speak of your dad very often.”

“He was gone a lot. Career military man. He served in the first World War. Mostly it was my mom and my grandfather, Monty, who raised me. My dad… he’s a good man. I wish all the time that I knew him better.”

“Isn’t that the plight of all sons?” David asks. At Patrick’s questioning look, he shrugs. “My father has been working since he was four years old. He built a magazine empire with his own two hands, and poured all his blood, sweat and tears into it. He was my age before he realized he should probably get on with having a family, before he got too old and too worn to bother.”

“Are both your parents older?”

“My mom is thirteen years younger than my dad. She’ll be sixty-four this year. My dad just turned seventy-six.”

Patrick whistles, low. “Not the type to throw the ball around.”

“He wanted to. I think that might have been the worst part of all.”

They turn the corner of the bank and there is the small storefront just off the end of the paved walkway. The shop is so small, about the size of the bunk he’s renting at the hostel, just a small counter with a stool at the back, the shelves lined to bursting with what look like the castoffs of the entire town, and the parade of tourists who’ve come here. “Oh,” David breathes from the doorway, and Patrick knows he’s hooked him. He grins, picking up a bowler hat that looks like it just came out of the Charlie Chaplain collection. “Uh huh.”

“This is…”

“Junk?”

“ _So much junk_ ,” David says, elated. He delves into the shelves and Patrick leaves him to it. 

He spies a set of Russian nesting dolls, all unwrapped and missing the middle doll. Directly down from that is a small marble bust of someone Patrick is pretty sure is the most recent Pope, but could also be Beethoven. There’s a small stack of postcards, the front splattered with bright technicolor renderings of the world’s beaches, the slanted black script on the back almost totally faded away.

“Imagine someone selling your old personal correspondence,” David says from over the shelf he’s perusing, his voice full of a shudder, and for the first time that day, Patrick whole-heartedly agrees and sees no reason to tease David over it. 

“Dear Constance,” he intones, pretending he’s reading the back of a postcard from Salt Lake City, of all places, and one-hundred-percent teasing David over it. “All is well. Thank you for the boil cream — backside has since healed and can sit again without pain.”

David makes gagging noises from behind the shelf and Patrick can barely contain the laughter in his voice. “Pass on my love to Ma and Pa and Bowler.”

“Bowler?”

“The dog, of course.”

“Of course,” David says, muffled from behind the shelf. “Why are there so many _mugs_.”

Patrick’s got a nose for these things, and he’d bet on David being a man who likes to go treasure hunting. He’s glad to see his hunch paying off. The shelves of the little shop are filled with all the claptrap of village life, and American things GIs have sold to have money for booze. Regulation knives by the handful, a helmet or two serving as bowls for other clutter. 

He’s just putting an old tin cup back on the shelf when he sees it, tucked behind the heavily scarred leather cover of a King James Bible. 

The cigarette case is thin and decorated beautifully in the art nouveau style so popular just a few short years ago. A woman with long, flowing pale hair is in profile, with circles of curling blue flowers behind her that match the silk of her flowing dress, the headdress that trails down her shoulders in elegant wisps. The case is silver, with a little button clasp that Patrick is glad to see still snaps open easily. It’s both masculine and feminine, not unlike David himself, and Patrick can picture him slipping it out of his pocket at the _Salome_ , thin and elegant and hopelessly refined in his long, artists fingers.

David is muttering behind him, crouched down and looking at something on a bottom shelf. If Patrick is going to do this, he needs to do it fast.

It takes less than three minutes. Patrick even has exact change for once, and he’s just paid the little old man behind the register and slipped the little case into his pocket and out of sight when David finally emerges from his search, sweater just a little bit dusty. He’s holding a skinny vase in a Greek style, shellacked in horrible black paint. It’s the ugliest thing he’s ever seen. David’s eyes are so wide Patrick can see the white all around them. “This is a Royal Haeger.”

Patrick frowns at him. “Okay?”

“This pot. It’s a Royal Haeger.”

He makes a face. “It’s hideous.”

“They’re selling it for one franc.”

“You can bargain them down,” Patrick says skeptically. 

But David isn’t listening. He goes up to the desk and speaks in rapid-fire French with the old man. Patrick can’t follow a single word of it, but their voices start to rise. David is gesturing wildly, and the old man is furious, though the more David speaks the more the fury seems to fade. Some of the color also fades from his face, and he looks down at the pot as if he’s seen a ghost. David speaks for some time longer, and at his next pause, the old man comes around the desk, leaning heavily on his cane, and bursts into tears before he can even get his arms around David’s shoulders.

David winces and looks over at him, mouths, _Help me!_ , but Patrick is too busy being overwhelmed, watching this beautiful man, so tall his head nearly comes to the ceiling, awkwardly patting the shoulders of the sobbing grandfather attached to him. At the commotion, an elderly woman who must be the wife comes out from the back, and things get categorically worse. It takes fifteen minutes before they can get the gentleman to let go, and the little grandmother can’t stop kissing David’s cheeks, cupping his face in her tiny hands, while David blushes and utters reassurances the entire while. Somehow Patrick is brought in and he gets kisses and fierce handshakes too, and by the time it’s all said and done they’re leaving with a basket of fresh scones and crisp apples plucked from ripened trees.

Patrick is laughing before they even get halfway down the walk, and David throws his hands up in the air. “A franc! It’s worth three thousand! I wasn’t going to let him sell a Royal Haeger to some country bumpkin to use as a _spittoon_.”

“Frankly, I’ve seen nicer spittoons,” Patrick says, just to be a shit, and because it’ll get David to glare at him. He loves it when David glares at him. “That was amazing back there.”

“One franc!”

“You could have bought it from them for one franc,” he can’t help but say. “You could have brought it back to New York and sold it for five thousand dollars.”

It brings David up short. “I could have, yes.”

“You didn’t even think of doing that, did you.”

Something fights over David’s face, like he doesn’t want to admit he’s a good and decent person. Like he’s never thought of himself in that context before now. “You heard them. Monsieur Lemar has arthritis, and his wife can’t stand for very long each day.”

It’s the answer he’s looking for. Patrick bumps his shoulder against David’s. “Here. Have a scone.”

“I love scones,” David admits, as if Patrick has no idea, and Patrick rubs his mouth to hide his smile.

David breaks off pieces of scone and Patrick does his best to peel his eyes away from the way David’s fingers drift towards his mouth so that he can focus on the path, on not tripping over his own two feet and letting gravity make a fool of him. Patrick isn’t in a rush, doesn’t want to be in a rush, but as much bravado and confidence as he’s had towards the motorcycle thus far, he’s not looking forward to making the trip back in the dark, so they make their way back across the bridge with a kind of leisurely focus that straddles the gap. They stop to watch the sun dip below the roofline, painting the sky in blushes and corals that make David’s skin glow, but David stays strong enough to walk past several small carts selling coffees, pastries, the smell of sugar and butter following them down the street. 

“This was lovely,” David says as they get back to the bike, his hands tucked into the bends in his elbows as he watches Patrick open the saddlebags and unsnap the helmets. He turns to hand David his and catches him shivering, quirks an eyebrow in a look he’s learned from David. David shrugs but bites the inside of his cheek and can’t keep the longing out of his eyes as Patrick pulls out his thick leather jacket.

“Are you cold, David?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“No.” Patrick laughs, and so does David, dipping his chin with gratitude and slipping his arms into the coat Patrick holds open for him, the cuffs riding up an inch or two in the wrist — it reminds Patrick of the jacket he’d been wearing the first night they’d met, only far more unintentional. He pulls the jacket closed around himself and steps towards Patrick, wrapping his hand around the edge of the helmet and using it to pull Patrick towards him. He presses a small, soft kiss to the skin at the corner of Patrick’s mouth, first on the left, then on the right, and it’s all Patrick can do not to turn his head and claim David’s mouth.

But, it’s over before he gets the chance, and David steps back, clearing his throat and sticking his hands in his — Patrick’s — pockets. “Thank you,” David says, his voice breaking. He tries again, sounding more like himself. “For this, for the jacket.”

“You’re welcome. Keep it warm for me,” Patrick says, slipping his helmet on and smiling to himself at the small, choked noise David makes. He slips his leg over the bike and kicks it started as David climbs on behind, his hands pressed into the soft flesh above Patrick’s hips, his cheek resting against the crest of Patrick’s shoulder. 

*

They’re halfway back to Paris when David’s hand drifts up from Patrick’s hip and Patrick sees it out of the corner of his eye at the same time that he hears David’s voice in his ear, shouting against the wind. “Up for a nightcap?”

And Patrick can see it, barely, tucked in a tiny valley between two little hills just to their left. There’s a dirt path that’s almost impossible to see in the quickly fading evening light, but the lights of the pub light it like a candle in the darkness, and Patrick nods, looking over both shoulders before slowing down and gently turning onto the dirt path. There’s almost no light by the time they hit the pub, and Patrick is already saying a prayer for the later version of them, but the warm pool of light they pull in to has enough of its own kind of magic that Patrick is able to go back to not caring for just a little bit longer.

The building is made of wood paneling and raw stone that looks like it’s been dug out of the local hillside. There’s the building, and a low half wall that surrounds an outer courtyard littered with small two-top tables, benches, a few larger picnic tables, a hodgepodge of seating that’s pleasantly full, the chatter reaching them even here. There aren’t any other vehicles around, and Patrick doesn’t hear anything but French, so he thinks odds are good they’ve chanced along a truly local place. He takes the helmet from David, who keeps Patrick’s jacket, and the two walk to a small square table in the near corner of the yard, Patrick keeping the table while David goes inside to order. 

Patrick leans back in his chair and takes a deep breath, his head falling back between his shoulder blades as his eyes adjust to the multitude of strung lights above him, crisscrossing on a wooden bracing that frames the courtyard. Above them, through the hazy golden glow of the bulbs, there’s a stretch of stars that reminds him of home with a pang deep in his chest as he realizes he couldn’t — _wouldn’t_ — be doing this at home, any of it, and not with David, and for the first time in a long time he wants to stay just where he is. 

“Luck’s going our way tonight,” David says as he places a tray down on the table, basically covering its entire surface. There’s a roughhewn wooden board covered in cheese, and nuts, and a few thick slices of dark bread, and next to that is the biggest cocktail shaker Patrick has ever seen next to two shot glasses and half an orange. “Not only do they have Sidecars on special, I was able to sweet-talk my way into _both_ kinds of cheeses for free.” 

David says it with a little puff of his chest, like he’d negotiated the Treaty of Versailles, and Patrick gives him a polite little clap as David prepares the shaker.

“Shit,” David says, looking around the tray and then back at the bar with a grumpy tilt to his mouth.

“What?”

“No knife for the orange,” David says, preparing to stand when Patrick hand reaches out and rests on his wrist.

“I’ve got it. Or, rather. You’ve got it,” Patrick leans forward and reaches his hand into the pocket of his own coat where it’s wrapped around David’s body, letting his fingers trail along the heat of his ribs through the thin lining of the pocket before they wrap around the short, cold body of the pocket knife he always keeps there. David’s eyes are big, and dark, when Patrick pulls the knife free and flicks it open, offering it to him hilt first. David takes it, slowly, and asks, “Am I packing any other heat I need to know about?”

“Grenades in the vest pocket. Pistol in the back lining. I’m kidding,” he adds, when David’s eyes go impossibly wider, “though I’m flattered you think I’m a one-man artillery unit.”

“I think when it comes to you, appearances can be deceiving,” David says, slicing the orange in half, then in thirds.

“How so?”

“You’ve got an angel face and the biggest doe eyes I’ve ever seen.”

The compliment hits him someplace deep, someplace Patrick had no idea even existed at the very heart of him, like a secret compartment buried in the soft marrow of his ribs. He feels it like a strike, but it leaves something soft in its wake, warming the parts of him that have been so cold for so long. “ _Doe eyes_?” he asks, only partially outraged. 

“Big Bambi eyes,” David agrees, a little smile curling his mouth as he gives the cocktail shaker a back-and-forth shake, the ice inside clacking and clattering against the thin metal. He pours the cocktails into both shot glasses, adding a squeeze of orange over them at the last moment, and pushes one of the small plates towards him. “They’re the first thing I noticed about you. I saw you come in, saw you when the music really caught your attention. It was like the entire bar fell away.” David looks down a bit, shy, the long sweep of his eyelashes casting shadows under the soft patina of golden light strung above them. “I wanted that attention on me.”

His heart does a flip in his chest, powerful and sudden and almost painful. “You did. Catch my attention.”

“After I sent you the drink.”

“No.” It seems important, suddenly, that he get this right. That he says these words in the right order. That he not mess this up. “I saw you laugh. You were sitting on that stool, legs crossed, and you had your head thrown back. You were laughing, and I couldn’t hear it over the band, but I wanted to — I wanted to get closer. I’ve never felt that before, David.”

David’s mouth curls into a small smile, so small and warm and real. “And now? That you’ve gotten to know me?”

“Oh, I don’t know you,” Patrick says on a hum, and takes the shot. It burns like hellfire, clearing his sinuses in one violent go, and he doesn’t cough until he _does_ , and David is laughing out loud, pushing a glass of water his way. Patrick takes a drink, shuddering, and watches with mute, amused rage as David tosses his drink back without a blink. “Oh my God, what a showoff,” he croaks, and gives in to the urge to cough again.

“You’re a lightweight. How is that even possible, you’re a _Captain_.”

“Don’t change the subject,” Patrick says, and shoves a piece of cheese in his mouth in hope it’ll alleviate the burning in his throat. “You do that, you know.”

“Maybe I like a wide and varied subject matter,” David says, but when Patrick glares around his cheese, he relents. “You’re right. I… don’t trust easily. I’ve been told it’s a particular character flaw of mine.”

“I don’t know. Sometimes it’s smart to play your cards close to the vest.”

David snorts and pours them both another round of shots. Patrick picks it up with a wary look, but David clinks their glasses together before throwing his back smoothly. Patrick feels the spark of competition deep in the base of his spine and he does his best to swallow smoothly, to breathe through the burn and blink through the tears that spring to his eyes. He clears his throat, once, but manages not to cough. It earns him a nod of pride from David, and Patrick’s heart stutters at the scope of things he’d do to earn that look again. “There’s close and then there’s...closed.”

Patrick nods. “I think I can understand that. I’ll tell you what. I’ll make you a deal.”

“Terms?”

“We trade. Three questions at a time. You pass, you drink, pass three times and you take a _fourth_ drink for avoidance. Sound good?”

David spends a second studying him, leaning back in his chair, his teeth worrying into his lower lip as his eyes sparkle in the light, both of them perched on the edge of something dangerous, here at this table beneath a swatch of stars, where shadow meets light. 

David pours them both one more round but stands before taking it, grabbing the shaker and heading back to the bar. Patrick traces the lines of his palm with his thumb nail, tracking back over what he’d proposed and all the ways it was wildly inappropriate, before David returns with a second shaker and sits it down in front of Patrick.

“Who first?”

Patrick takes the shot David has already poured for him and holds it, loose between his fingers. He waves his other hand in front of David in a way that means ‘proceed’, and David leans forward on his elbow, chin resting on his cupped hand.

“So. What’s it like, living with all those clean cut, uniformed men?” He wiggles an eyebrow at Patrick, the laughter on his face instead of in his voice.

Patrick chuckles, and leans forward, putting the glass back down on the table between them and bracing his elbows on the edge of the table. “Exactly like what you’re picturing, David. Close. _Intimate_. But most of all...smelly.” He says it like he’s describing the girls of the Moulin Rouge to his squad mates, just to watch the word roll through David’s brain, to watch his face as he processes it and Patrick gets to hear that laugh again. “Seriously. It’s lots of men, with varying levels of personal hygiene, awake at all hours and with limited access to ready or steady bathing. It gets...well. Unpleasant, at times.”

“That… is my worst nightmare.”

“It can be, at times. Worse on pork-and-beans nights.”

“Well doesn’t that sound delightful,” David says with a cringe.

“No, it’s not. But. We’re not exactly there to be delighted or delighting.”

“Then why are you there?”

“Most of us? To die, unfortunately.” Patrick downs the shot, even though he didn’t pass on the question, so that he doesn’t have to watch David’s face process this one. 

“That’s. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” Patrick catches his eye, his smile gentle. “Please, don’t be. Soldiers are the least blind to the pain of war, but that doesn’t mean we have to see it everywhere we look, if we’re lucky.”

“And you’ve been lucky lately?”

“The luckiest,” Patrick says. “And that makes three. Which also makes it my turn.”

David leans back, a touch of amusement curling his mouth. “Well played, Captain Brewer.”

“Not my first time,” Patrick says, and leans back too. “You up for the challenge?”

“Do you mean, am I going to get so drunk I fall off the back of your bike? Hardly.”

Patrick nods thoughtfully, tapping a finger to the rim of his glass. “Okay. Here we go. I’m not kidding, David. This is going to get to the very heart of you.”

David scrunches his nose a bit, one eye half-closed. “Do your worst.”

Patrick leans in. “You have _got_ to tell me about your clothes.”

David bursts out laughing and Patrick can’t help the grin, delighted to finally get David to laugh just like that, bright and loud. “My _clothes_? Also, that wasn’t a question.”

“Okay, let me rephrase — why do you wear the clothes you do? Let me emphasize, I really like them, but I’ve never seen fashion anything quite like yours.”

David grins, lips tucked into the corner of his mouth. His eyes are sparkling bright with mirth. “I was an art major.”

“That can’t be the answer to all your life’s questions.”

“It can be if it’s true. Fashion is just another way I express myself. How I like the world to see me. I wear what I like, and what I like are blacks and grays and splashes of red. I like different cuts, and I like things that are unexpected.”

“Like the jacket too short in the sleeve?”

“One of my tamer pieces,” David says, amusement chasing its way around his face. “Haven’t you ever worn things just because they made you feel good? Because you liked how other people saw you in them?”

“Honestly? No. I went from an army of denim, short-pants and flannel to a uniform.”

“That’s a lie. You’re wearing a nice blue sweater tonight.”

“You’re changing the subject.”

He shakes his head and makes a small humming sound in the back of his throat. He’s silent for a second, running his finger around the rim of his shot glass. “I have a corset.”

Something short circuits quietly, violently, in Patrick’s animal hindbrain. “A corset?”

“Red and black brocade,” David says, studying him thoughtfully. “I had it handmade here in France some years ago, when I went through a waist training phase. Now it just serves as a reminder of better times. It feels good, when I wear it. Holding me all in, protecting me.”

Patrick’s mouth is dry. “I imagine you look stunning in it, don’t you?”

David leans in, slowly, and Patrick — drawn like a moth to open flame — helplessly leans forward as well. David taps gently on Patrick’s chin with one finger. “That was more than three questions.”

He sits back, pleased, and it’s Patrick’s turn to laugh. “Well played, sir.”

“Thank you. I also believe that makes it my turn again. Why are you in Paris?”

Patrick takes a second to think. There are half a dozen answers he could give David, but the one he lands on is the easiest. “Because it’s beautiful here. I needed to remember that beautiful places still exist in this world.”

“And why were you in the bar that night?”

“Because it was the first one I found with a beer sign lit in the window.”

David opens his mouth to ask his last question but then snaps it shut, the click of his teeth like a bullet through Patrick. “Why didn’t you come with Stevie and I that first night?”

It’s Patrick’s turn to stutter, to draw a blank, to have the reel of answers rolling through his brain go inexorably blank. Or rather, the opposite of blank. There are so many answers Patrick has right on the edge of his tongue, and unfortunately for both of them, the one closest to the edge is the truth. So Patrick drowns it instead, the liquor burning a steady aftertaste of cowardice down his throat. 

David nods, something in his eyes shifting darker. Sadder. “Hm. Fair enough. Why did you agree to dinner with me, then?”

“Because you have good taste in food.” It’s the truth, but Patrick can see from the fall of David’s shoulders that it’s not what he wanted to hear. “And I wanted to see if. Maybe I made a mistake by not going with you and Stevie.”

“And?”

“And I’m a big enough man to admit when I’ve made an error born of fear, David. Are you?”

It’s more than three questions, and David knows it, but they’ve already started the next round and Patrick’s fingers flex when David tosses back a shot of his own, both of their glasses now empty and the precipice of unanswered truths opening beneath them. 

There’s a silence weighed in the words they’ve said to each other, in the heat that is sitting, waiting and untapped, between them. They’ve been headed in this direction from the very moment they locked eyes across the _Salome_ , but for the first time Patrick realizes that he isn’t the only one who is afraid. David is loose and comfortable across from him, but it’s an act, a _sham_ — David is terrified. Patrick sees it now, in the dart of his eyes, the lazy curl of his mouth. He feels whatever this is between them, too. 

It’s instinct, to want to gentle that fear, to nurture it and tend to it until it lessens, until the sweaty grip of it eases. He knows he has to tread lightly, now, like a man approaching a terrified deer, hand outstretched. David is just as likely to run as to lean in, and Patrick doesn’t know what will happen to him if David turns away, not when Patrick is standing on this precipice of the rest of his life. A life that will be dimmer for not having David in it.

He pushes the thought away. He has now, right now. He has tonight, and tomorrow, and the day after. He has precious hours to fill, and he knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that he wants David to fill them with him.

He picks up the cocktail shaker, pours them each another shot. He squeezes the orange, licking the spray of juice from the meat of his thumb, and pretends David doesn’t watch him do it. Time to take a chance. “What attracted you, about me?”

He can tell it isn’t what David was expecting at all. He’s motionless, silent, and Patrick begs the universe not to let David take the drink. His long fingers flex against the glass, and Patrick’s heart squeezes, but then David says, “I told you already. Your eyes.”

“Only my eyes?”

“You were earnest. Sweet. You thanked me for the drink… no one has done that in a long time. Mostly, I get a smirk, or a laugh, or a head nod if I’m lucky. What attracted you about _me_?”

Patrick could say _it isn’t your turn_. He doesn’t.

“You’re the most beautiful person I’ve ever met.”

David’s eyes drop, immediately, and the red that swamps up over his olive skin is bright, even under the dim fairy lights strung overhead. 

“I’m not talking about your looks, David, though you’re gorgeous. You just have this glow about you. Like...like you can see the world in a unique way, and you know how to make others see it like that too.”

“You’re a very, very sloppy drunk,” David says, brusquely, and pushes the water glass his way. He won’t meet Patrick’s eyes. “You should drink that if you plan to drive us back to Paris and get us there in one piece.”

“You deflect,” Patrick says, and covers David’s hand in his, gently, gently, setting the water glass aside. David’s fingertips are wet with condensation, his rings cool to the touch, and Patrick touches them each in turn, so carefully, even when David twitches. “Because I think people have used you. Hurt you. They didn’t treat you like the treasure you are. You apologize for expressing your joy in the things you like. You feel so deeply, but you don’t speak your mind, because you think your mind isn’t worth knowing. But it is. You’re the kind of man who will drop everything and travel across the world during a war to save your sister. You’re brave, and honorable, and a good and just man. You’re beautiful, David.”

And there, sitting across from him, is the real David Rose. Stripped bare, face flush and breathing fast, his eyes dart down to their hands, clasped so gently together, then back up, to trace Patrick’s face. His mouth. His lips part, quietly, softly. “No one. No one has… has ever...”

“A travesty,” Patrick says, and lifts their hands, pressing a kiss softly to the center of David’s palm, right where he’d cradled Patrick’s hand so tenderly in his the first night they met. He feels that touch like fire down his spine. He presses David’s palm, gently, against the side of his neck, where his pulse is racing, cupping both of his hands over it. “That’s what makes this so necessary.”

David makes a low sound, something awful and graveled, and strokes Patrick’s neck, his throat, his cheek. He runs the back of his fingers lightly there, along the line of Patrick’s jaw, but whatever he’s about to say is broken by a rolling clap of thunder in the distance. They both jump, and David says, “Fuck, was that —”

“Yes, yes it was,” Patrick says, and scrambles to get up, tugging David’s hand with him. “Come on, that was way too close.”

“Will you laugh at me if I tell you these suede shoes can’t touch even a drop of water, or they’ll be ruined?”

“Yes,” Patrick says, smiling, and they stop and stare at each other for one heart stopping moment before racing together to where he’s left the bike parked.

They laugh like kids, hopping from foot to foot as they wait for the other to get their helmet snapped on, as Patrick swings his leg over the bike and gets the engine going. David scrambles onto the bike behind him and loops his arms tightly around Patrick’s middle, giggling in his ear as lightning claps in the not-so-far distance. Patrick counts in his head, _one-Mississippi, two-Mississippi, three Mississippi, four,_ before thunder rumbles like a cannon, too close. They’re not going to beat it, but they’re going to give it the old Harvard try.

Patrick flicks the headlamp on and they’re off, traversing the Parisian countryside as fast as he dares. David is holding tight, the jump of his chest along the line of Patrick’s back, a warm solid line all along the planes of his shoulders, his spine. He presses his cheek to the back of Patrick’s shoulder, arms a perfect cage around Patrick’s chest, and shouts into Patrick’s ear, “We’re not going to make it!” 

“Your _shoes_!” Patrick wails dramatically, and David is laughing even harder now, burying his face in Patrick’s sweater. 

The air is thick with ozone, with the ocean salt of an oncoming rain. It smells like the sea, and that’s how Patrick knows this is going to be a deluge. Paris is close, he knows it is, but it isn’t close enough.

A crack of lightning. _One-Mississippi, two_ -, thunder booms, and the skies open up.

He’s drenched to the skin in moments. David is shouting in his ear, incomprehensible, and Patrick lets off the throttle before he kills them both. Lightning crashes again, far too close, and in the flash of blinding light Patrick sees the old red windmill they’d passed on the way up here, damaged by an invading army and waiting to be repaired. He turns the bike up the path and drives them towards it as quickly as he dares, but it doesn’t matter — he’s soaked to the bone, his clothes sticking to his skin. 

He throws the bike in park and hops off. The door of the windmill is locked, as he suspected it would be, but Patrick is a military man, and he forces the lock once, twice, until it gives way with a whine. When he looks back, David is standing next to the bike looking not unlike a drowned cat, hair hanging in his eyes and leather jacket soaked to a dark brown, and Patrick grabs his hand and tugs him in before going back for the bike. 

It’s warm inside the windmill, after the aching cold of the rain. The tiny round windows on either side of the windmill do nothing to illuminate the interior, but Patrick doesn’t need his eyes to find his gear. In the time it takes David to say, “Jesus fucking Christ it’s _freezing_ ,” Patrick has unlatched his saddlebags and found his matches, his heavy wool blanket, his candles. It takes another moment to light them, and then there’s David, in their dim glow, arms crossed and shivering and shocked. 

“You have candles?”

“I have everything,” Patrick says with a snort, and looks around the interior of the windmill for a moment. It was a flour grinding windmill before the war — the massive gears and cogs that make the drive shaft turn are ancient, well-used, and probably make the most incredible bread. It smells a little bit like sawdust and wheat, and there are burlap sacks everywhere, filled with god only knows what. They wouldn’t be ideal for sleeping on, if this storm didn’t let up, but Patrick has slept on worse. 

“I’m not getting fresh,” he says, and before David can reply, he shucks off his sweater. 

It flops off him like a fish, hitting the floor with a wet slap. His cotton button down underneath has gone translucent from the rain, which he’s mortified about, but Patrick knows better than to sit around in a soaking wet sweater. He beckons David closer, wool blanket in hand, but falters when he actually looks at him. 

The… the look in David’s eyes. His face. Like someone just punched him in the solar plexus, and sucked all the air out of the room at the same time. His eyes are huge, and dart from Patrick’s face, to his chest, then down to the soaking wet line of his trousers, to where the fabric has molded to every curve of Patrick’s hips, and thighs. His cock. 

Heat races in a lick down Patrick’s spine, down low between his legs, to where David’s eyes keep dropping. No one has ever looked at Patrick like that, like… like he was equal parts precious and delectable; something David wanted to keep safe by consuming entirely. It’s an edge of desire that presses on Patrick’s throat like a knife, that holds him in place while David crosses the space between him and _reaches_ , extends his hands until they’re bracketing Patrick’s hip like they had on the bike.

Only they’re not on the bike anymore. They’re face to face and Patrick can taste the cognac on David’s breath as he stares at Patrick, enough space between them for the Holy Ghost and one last decision laid at Patrick’s feet. David took the first step, but Patrick will have to take the last.

Patrick takes David’s mouth like the gift that it is, pressing their lips together and tasting the bite of alcohol, the salinity of rainwater, the underlying essence of whatever magic makes David who he is. It’s achingly tender, and tentative, and soft, as if David is afraid to scare him. To spook him into running away, jerking back, as he did last night on the bridge. 

The burn of want sets fire to his chest, his heart, and Patrick yanks David all the way in.

They’re panting against each other’s mouths, relief and desire and a connection so deep that Patrick thinks he’ll never feel anything like it again. David’s tongue is coaxing his lips apart and Patrick has his fingers in David’s hair, no idea how they even got there, but now that they are he can’t help but fist his fingers, tug David to where he wants him. He stumbles back and David pins him against the drive shaft of the mill, the low creaking groan of the wood, but Patrick can’t hear, see, feel anything beyond the wild thumping of his heart and the feel of David under his hands. 

David thrusts his tongue and wraps his big, big hands around Patrick’s ribs, then up, up, over his shoulders, holding him in place, pushing against him, into him, as if he can’t get close enough but wants to try. He’s never felt like this, never, never, wild with terror that David will let go, that David will _never_ let go. Patrick is overwhelmed by the size of him, the strength, the way David can push and move him so easily, pin him with the plane of his hips, box him in with the breadth of his shoulders, the solid ridge of his cock pressing against Patrick’s. 

Overwhelmed, Christ, so overwhelmed, at the rasp of stubble against his lips, the way he feels looked after, safe, hidden away in the big circle of David’s embrace. David jerks his hips forward and Patrick cries out in sudden, impossible desperation, heat burning its way from his core and out to his fingertips, his toes. He can’t breathe, can’t think, can’t see beyond David’s tongue, his hands, the heat of him, the _smell_ of him, leather and the tangy, woodsy scent of his cologne. 

He’s whimpering, begging, angling his head for deeper kisses, and he’s never — he’s never heard himself make these noises before, not ever, and he’s terrified of it, of how easily it’s come. He would bend like a sapling in a windstorm for David, let him take him over, let him consume him and rend him apart if only he could keep feeling this. 

Patrick’s hands drift down from David’s hair across the back of his shoulders, his thumbs pressing into the hollow just above David’s collarbone. On a whim, he drags his thumbnail roughly across the still-wet fabric of David’s shirt, and David hisses, catching Patrick’s lower lip between his teeth in response. Patrick sees red behind his eyelids and feels every nerve come alive at once. It reminds him of the time he got shot, the bullet tearing through his skin and setting every feeling in his body on fire in a single second. That he’d wanted to end immediately; this he wants to keep alive for as long as he possibly can. He wants to build an eternity inside this moment, to live and breathe and eventually die in it. He presses his hips into David’s and digs his fingers into the meat of his biceps and throws himself headfirst into an experience for maybe the first time in his adult life. 

David’s hands land heavily on Patrick’s shoulders, one coming to cup the side of Patrick’s face as the other travels over the planes of his back, the muscles that tense and shift as Patrick tries to press all the space out from between them. His fingers brush across the puckered skin of Patrick’s bullet wound scar, hesitating like a stutter, and Patrick freezes, his eyes fluttering open to watch David’s face. 

David is looking at him, his pupils blown, his chest heaving as his fingers continue further southward, along Patrick’s beltline, the very tips of his fingers dipping beneath the waistband of Patrick’s chinos as he catches Patrick’s mouth again. But the tenderness is back, the feeling that David is treating him like something breakable, and Patrick can feel the end of the kiss coming a fraction of a second before it does. 

“I think. I don’t hear it raining anymore,” David pants, his voice choked and his forehead pressed to Patrick’s. Patrick nods.

“Me either.” As soon as the words are out of his mouth, he hears the faintest rumble of thunder in the distance, so quiet it’s more a feeling than a sound.

“We should. Maybe get headed back? If we’re going to make it back to Paris before another wave hits?”

“That’s probably not a bad idea.” Patrick tries not to sound like David has suggested they eat arsenic sandwiches with a nightshade chaser. His lips are so close. Shivers race down his spine, gather in all the hollows of his joints. He could lean forward, right now, and press his mouth right there to the bow of David’s lips, and it fills him with a wild agony of courage, the kind he’s only ever experienced moments before coming up out of a fox hole, rifle in hand. “I feel like I need to—”

“— you really don’t—” 

“— thank you, David.” Patrick says it louder than he means to, but he says it with a conviction he needs David to feel. Now that he’s said it, he’s realizing it’s not a complete thought all on its own, he adds in a rush. “I’ve never done that. Anything like that. With. Someone like you.”

“Heir to a lady's magazine empire?”

“A man.”

“Oh.”

“And I was. Unsure. Of how to best make that happen for us, and I was beginning to think, between the drinking and the rain, that it wasn’t _going_ to happen for us.”

“Luckily for you, I’m a very generous person then,” David says, but the biggest smile Patrick has ever seen is playing at the corner of his mouth, and it hammers home a final nail in Patrick’s heart, one he hadn’t seen coming and was unprepared for. He trusts David, but more so — he thinks David might be starting to trust him. And that feels like a gift he’s not prepared to hold in both of his rain-damp hands. 

“Can — can we see each other tomorrow?”

“We can see each other whenever you’d like,” David murmurs, and runs his thumb, gently, along Patrick’s jaw before taking a step back. He shucks out of the leather jacket and helps Patrick put it on, despite his protests, but he can’t deny how warm he is once it’s zipped up, the heat of David’s skin against him, cradling him in its protective warmth. He wraps the wool blanket around David in turn, and together they roll out the bike back out of the windmill, into the cold French night. 

He climbs on first. David climbs on behind him, pressing close now — much closer than he had this morning, even this afternoon. Hip to shoulder, snug and tight. 

He wraps his arms around the tails of the wool blanket, and then wraps his arms around Patrick’s middle. 

“Shall we?” Patrick asks, and David presses a kiss to the back of his shoulder.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another chapter, another chance to thank our amazing betas [TINN](https://archiveofourown.org/users/this_is_not_nothing/profile) and [helvetica](https://archiveofourown.org/users/helvetica_upstart/pseuds/helvetica_upstart), and our sensitivity reader [whetherwoman](https://archiveofourown.org/users/whetherwoman/pseuds/whetherwoman). They've given us their time and support and each chapter of this beast just keeps growing so seriously, there are no words.


	4. Chapter Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're almost half way there! To all that have read along, thank you! To those who waited to read all in one go -- thank you! And all that gratitude times a million to our intrepid edit team, our amazing betas [TINN](https://archiveofourown.org/users/this_is_not_nothing/profile) and [helvetica](https://archiveofourown.org/users/helvetica_upstart/pseuds/helvetica_upstart), and our sensitivity reader [whetherwoman](https://archiveofourown.org/users/whetherwoman/pseuds/whetherwoman). I don't think they knew quite what they were saying yes to, but they've rolled with every single punch so far.

David has suffered from insomnia all of his life.

In his quiet moments he thinks it started years ago, when he was a small boy waiting with barely controlled longing at his bedroom window for his mother and father to return home from their evenings out. He can remember how excited he would get to see his mother step out of the limousine in one of her glamorous gowns and whatever fur she’d chosen for the evening, his father in tails and white gloves. Dad would offer his elbow to her and she would always demure, laughing, and it was this funny little ritual that would always settle David’s fear. He was never allowed to leave his room after bedtime, but it was enough to see them, home and safe, from that second story window. He’s spent his life waiting for his parents to come home safe, it seems. A part of him even now lingers with a nameless anxiety, as if still wondering where they are, and until he knows he won’t be able to sleep. He thinks he’ll carry that the rest of his life.

He can’t shut his brain off, his mind whirling with the events of the night. Patrick had gotten them safely back to the _Gaston_ , near one in the morning, Paris laid out wet and glistening after the downpours of the evening. David had gotten off the back of the bike with far more grace than he’d first gotten on it, and Patrick had followed, his short hair ruffled with the slightest curl from the humidity after the rainstorm. He’d accepted the wool blanket back from David with that sweet smile, had said _I’ll see you tomorrow_. The urge to kiss his soft, pink mouth had almost been David’s undoing.

He’d gone up to his rooms in a daze, freezing cold and drunk on a feeling he can’t identify. He doesn’t remember unlocking the door, or turning on the lamps; can’t remember showering, or putting on his evening creams and serums. It’s only when he’s come back to the bedroom and put on the record player in the corner that David’s knees come out from under him, and he collapses, giddy and ridiculous, in the middle of his bed. 

Patrick. _Patrick._

 _God._ He wasn’t what David had been expecting, what he’d gone looking for, or what he’d wanted, when he made passage for his trip to Paris. And yet here David is, overwhelmed with thoughts of that small, lovely man, with his button nose and honey brown eyes and his smile like summer sunshine. He has no idea what this feeling is, or why it’s so strong. David is starting to realize he’s never felt anything like it. Not even when he was with Stevie, the woman who complemented him in everything, did he feel like this. He doesn’t even have the words to describe it, this feeling that fills the hollow between his ribs with warm air, this joy that tingles at the base of his throat, locking it up at times so he has to swallow it back down. 

Patrick had called David beautiful. It hadn’t been a line; he’d _meant_ it. David doesn’t know what to do with that. With the feeling, caught in his sternum.

He presses both hands there, tight, and stares up at the art deco patterns of the ceiling.

He wants, with a furious and burning ache. If this was — if this was a simple _infatuation_ he could handle it. It’s nothing he hasn’t dealt with before. He was infatuated with Sebastien, with his devil-may-care smirk and the camera he carried everywhere — his raucous curls and the perfect symmetry of his perfect face, the low, smokey tone of his voice. With Sebastien it had been all carnal delights, but David had mistaken the heat they’d shared in the bedroom for something more. That heartache still stings, a niggling pain low and deep inside where the hurts of his life would forever live, but it’s soothed, somehow, by Patrick, by finally recognizing the difference between the wants of the flesh and the wants of the heart. 

He’s attracted to Patrick — powerfully, painfully, attracted — to that tight little body, those hands, that confident tilt of his jaw. But even more than that, David is wildly attracted to what lies beneath the surface. The kiss tonight had been so different from what David has experienced, because for the first time in many, many years the person he’s kissing is someone David wants to know better. Someone he genuinely likes. Someone who, despite all rational thought, likes him as well.

The kiss they’d shared had felt like the snap of a key, unlocking a box inside of him he’d kept tightly shut for many years. All of his wants and needs and joys and sorrows have come tumbling out, and not even the anxiety tightening his joints is enough to stop them. The urge to lay them all out at Patrick’s feet is overwhelming. Even more so is the certainty that Patrick would gather them all up, place them in his rucksack where all of _his_ wants and needs and joys and sorrows live, and haul it up on his back where they can be protected, together. 

For the first time in his life, David knows he's found someone who won't hold that against him - who sees him for more than the sum of his parts. Just as certainly he knows that if Patrick asked he would take that rucksack too, carry it as long as necessary to ensure Patrick’s well-being. A shared load. A weight carried between them.

He turns on his side and stares at the glass window, at the golden light of the room reflected in it and obscuring the outside. 

Tonight. Tonight, he’s going to ask Patrick to have dinner here, at the _Gaston_. Here, in David’s room. Wine, and conversation, the red in Patrick’s hair catching in the lamplight, the solid strength of Patrick’s body in his arms as they dance together, oh God, finally dance together here to the soft, soothing notes of the jazz records he brought on a whim. They’re going to make memories together. David is going to kiss him as many times as Patrick will let him, and when the kisses ignite between them, David is going to tend to him, touch him and stroke him, and give him as much pleasure as he possibly can.

Patrick is leaving in three days. It’s unfair, it’s so unfair, that they’ve done this to each other when their lives are on such different trajectories. Patrick is a military man and David’s family has him in a stranglehold. This moment in time is only a dream of what could be, as wispy as a morning cloud. The thought fills him with a grief he can’t control and didn’t expect, flips him inside out, and he curls tighter on his side, tears springing to his eyes. This want, these _feelings_ , it’s — it’s not supposed to happen this fast. In his experience, it’s never happened at all. He didn’t think he was capable of it, until now. 

He just met Patrick. There’s so much left unexplored between them. So many joys they could give one another, if only given half the chance.

He falls into a restless, pitiless sleep. He dreams of the cold night on the cold ocean and a warm man beside him, holding him close and safe. 

*

“I am cashing in on every favor I’ve ever done for you in the history of our friendship, in this, my hour of need,” David says, closing the hotel’s office door behind him with a snap that sounds maybe a smidge too final, if Stevie’s deer-in-headlights expression is anything to go by. In normal circumstances David would tease her endlessly for it, but Stevie _knows him_. She can hear in his voice what he can’t say with words. It’s nice to be known like this, even if he and Stevie _have_ known each other biblically, but there’s a reason he’s come to her, best-friendship aside. It stands to reason that the only person who understands David down to his component parts will be able to help him get through this without damaging Patrick in ways that, in David’s experience, can leave scars.

“If this is some backhanded attempt to make us even, let me please remind you of the summer of 1939, the tennis twins, and the branzino,” Stevie says, as David collapses onto the dusty sofa across from her desk. She looks worse than he does, hungover and pale, wearing her sunglasses and nursing a cup of coffee as big as her head. “I don’t usually see you before one. Has someone died?”

“I’m in crisis,” David says, dropping his head back to stare at her watermarked ceiling. It’s always so startling to him, how well kept the hotel is and how neglected the offices are. They look like any office in any building, wood paneling and generic artwork on the walls. There is a smoke-stained portrait of Gaston himself behind Stevie’s desk, a stern Frenchman who bears an uncanny resemblance to an angry stag, glaring out at the world. “I did something very stupid last night.”

“Oh, this is one of _those_ talks,” Stevie, says, but David hears what she doesn’t say – he’s never come to her for relationship advice before because he isn’t a monster, so things must be desperate.

He hears her throw the lock on the hotel office door a moment before her weight comes down on his right. He rolls his head along the back of the sofa to look at her, beautiful Stevie, smart and sensible and messy Stevie, who he loves so much sometimes it hurts to think of, that he _has this person in his life_.

She grins at him. He rolls his eyes. “Well?”

“I did a stupid thing last night.”

“Stupid?”

“The stupidest. On a scale of one to ten, potentially the dumbest thing I’ve ever done.”

“You’d be more convincing if you weren’t smiling,” Stevie says, snickering. “Did you take Captain Brewer for a ride on your D-Plane? Which, as someone who's flown that voyage, may I just say is _highly_ enjoyable.”

He cringes from a place feral and deep, and the sheer delight on her face makes him rethink this entire idea. He moves to stand, gathering his tattered dignity around him like a shroud, and says, “Okay, if this is just going to be where you laugh at me, I’m leaving.”

“No, you’re not,” Stevie says, grinning like a cat who got the canary and tugging him back down onto the sofa. “I’m intrigued now. You’ve intrigued me. I promise, no more allusions to your abilities in bed.”

He sniffs. “Ew.”

“Which, for the record, were first rate. For a man who claims to like red wine over white wine, you know how to use your tongue.”

He twists a face at her. “Really? Is this where our friendship has come?”

“David.”

“Lurid references to my genitalia and blatant discussion of cunnilungus, all before the crack of dawn?”

“It’s almost eleven.”

“ _Stevie!”_

“ _David_.”

“Fine! Fine,” and the nerves flutter in David’s belly, anxiety punching up into his throat. “I feel as if I’m breaking Patrick’s trust in saying any of this, but I have to talk this out with someone, and there is literally no one else I can ask.”

They’re both patently allergic to sincerity, but maybe there’s something in his face, in his tone, because Stevie frowns suddenly. “Did Patrick — did he _hurt_ you?”

“ _What?_ No!”

“Let me remind you that the _Gaston_ has a basement with various body-burying accoutrement and a collection of old rugs.”

Her threat should not bring him such a flare of warmth and love, but here they are. “Patrick is the living embodiment of a newborn beagle puppy, he’s adorable and fluffy and new, so can you _please_.”

“Alright,” Stevie says, but her eyebrows are still gathered. “Want to tell me what’s going on? Because normally this kind of conversation is best done over alcohol, and I need to know just how much gin I need to ask Chef to send down.”

He rubs his hands over his face, the cool metal of his rings a balm against the pinpoints of heat, embarrassment and a tiny bite of humiliation he’d never admit to. “We saw each other again yesterday.”

“Three days in a row now,” she hums, and he pretends he didn’t hear her.

“He took me to Bougival, to the Impressionists Walk.”

Stevie whistles, low. “Oh. He’s got you pegged. Point one for Brewer.”

Stevie is not going to make this easy. He tries to remember how much he loves her. “We… we spent the day together. In the country. He bought me crepes.”

“You love crepes.”

“I _love_ crepes. And then he took me to a junk shop – did you know that’s a thing? Junk shops?”

Stevie is gazing at him with the gentlest expression he’s ever seen from her, ever, in all the years they’ve known each other. “I did know junk shops were a thing.”

“And we walked along the river, and then after we went to this little pub outside of town and ate cheese and drank sidecars and he told me he likes my clothes. No one likes my clothes.”

“Well, that’s because they’re stupid and only you could pull them off,” Stevie agrees.

“We talked for hours. And then we – we got caught in the rain, but we were on his bike –”

“His _what_?” Stevie says, sitting up straighter. “You rode on his _bike_?”

“I know,” he moans, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes. “We were soaked by the time he found us shelter, in this old creepy barn, and – and I couldn’t help it.”

She freezes, staring at him, and then scoots closer. “Wait, did you finally plant one on him?”

“Oh my _God_.”

But Stevie is laughing now, chin in hand where she’s leaning her elbow over the back of the sofa. “You did! You finally traded smooches! So how were they?”

The blush heats up his ears and his throat and Stevie’s grin softens into something warmer. “That good, huh.”

“They were fine,” David says, but the smile is tugging at the corners of his mouth. Stevie arches a brow, and he explodes, “Okay, they were _better_ than fine, but it has led me here to your stoop at my hour of need because it was – they were so much better than fine. _So much better._ And I don’t know what to do with that. I’m not – he’s never been with a man. He told me so, last night. I can’t be someone’s sole experience, Stevie. I’m the one you go to for a good time, handshake at the end of the night before going on your way. He took me to see where Monet painted _The Bridge at Bougival_ , and he bought me crepes, and he – he kept looking at me, all day, with this warmth, like he couldn’t believe his luck. He called me beautiful. So I kissed him, and it felt like the first time.”

“David,” Stevie sighs, and the lump in his throat is suddenly unbearable. He tips his head back again to stare at the hotel office ceiling, willing himself not to make a mess of his face.

Stevie shifts beside him, tipping her head back too, right next to his on the back of the sofa. Her hair smells like jasmine and rosewater, and when her small fingers curl in his he can’t help but lace their hands together. “If you ever repeat this to another living soul, I’ll make use of my collection of scary tools.”

“Noted,” he says, his voice nasal and disgusting.

“That first night? When you first fed the puppy?” David snorts. “I knew.”

“Knew what?”

“That this — that he — it’s different. This one’s different.”

He rolls his head to look at her, and she wrinkles her nose again and pokes his temple until he’s looking back at the ceiling. “What do you mean?”

“I’ve known you for twenty years, David. You don’t let people in. You flirt with them, and you laugh with them, and you have drinks with them, but never – not once – have you ever looked at them the way you look at Patrick Brewer. Not even me, might I add.”

David doesn’t have to ask. David is well-aware of what she’s saying, and he needs her to not say it, but Stevie is the bull in the china shop of his feelings. “You’ve let a lot of people hurt you over the years I’ve known you, me included,” Stevie says, her voice so soft. “But I don’t think he’s going to hurt you, David.”

“He is,” David says, choked. “He _is_ going to hurt me.”

“Not the way you think,” she says, with a gentleness he’s never heard from her before. “He’s leaving in a few days, yes, but do you honestly want to look back at this twenty years from now and regret never taking the chance?”

“It wouldn’t be the first regret,” he says with a sniff, picking up his head to glare at the back of his hands, the beds of his nails. 

“It might be your last, though.” And she doesn’t say it like a question, so David doesn’t take it as one. She’s the person who understands David, even when David doesn’t, so he decides to take her at her word for it. The next words tumble from his mouth like razor blades, a relief to have out even as they cut him. 

“What if _I_ hurt _him_?” He sniffs again, wetly this time as the fear he’s been battling since dawn finally takes form in front of him, given life when he spoke them into existence.

She picks up her head to look at him, but of course he won’t meet her eyes, so she puts a single finger under his chin and turns his head towards her, dips until he has no choice but to look at her, and then she smiles, soft and tentative and encouraging. It’s maybe the nicest her face has ever looked. “And what if you don’t?”

It’s too much, a question that lays out a map to a journey he’s not prepared to take. He’s battled heartache and won before. He’s yet to find a way to vanquish hope and walk away unbloodied. 

He looks down at where their fingers are tangled and bites his lip. “Well. I would say thank you for the help, but. This was awful.”

“ _So_ awful,” Stevie says, but she’s smiling when she squeezes his fingers. “Payment can be made in wine and good cheese. You know the one I like.”

“Nothing but limburger and Chardonnay for my own personal on-call sounding board,” he says, and drops a kiss right on Stevie Budd’s beautiful little head. 

“Don’t forget the garlic crackers!” she calls, as he closes the office door behind him. 

*

David is first and foremost an incredibly particular sort of man, a fact of his life he made peace with long ago. 

He likes things a certain way with very little room for change, and this includes his appearance. He learned grooming at his mother’s knee and has strived all his life to project an air of effortlessness, while also being immaculate, put together, and chic. He cares immensely about the image he projects to the world and the man he lets others see. At another time in his life, when he’d been so angry at the world and so trapped he could not see a way out, he had used it to great effect. To this day, he’s certain that the photos the paparazzo took outside the club in Amsterdam were the straw that broke his father’s back. 

Today is no ordinary kind of day, however. Anticipation dogs his steps, from his stop at the new wine shop Legrand Filles, where he chats with the sommelier for over an hour over the best bottle of red, to the Raphael Perrier salon for a cut and a style. He buys a new bottle of his favorite cologne because he left his own behind in New York, and the smell brings him back to all those jazz clubs in lower Manhattan, the woodsy, citrus scent that goes so well with his skin’s chemistry. The note he’s written Patrick sits heavy in his inner coat pocket, gone warm from his body heat, a little secret that makes him smile every time he thinks about it. 

The Gare du Nord is not difficult to find, for all that it’s tucked away from the main thoroughfare. It’s an old building with a small, tidy courtyard quietly serene, hugged by flowering trees and cheerful red shutters. A couple is just stepping out as he arrives and holds the door open for him, and he ducks inside quickly, thanking them with a murmur.

It’s a beautiful building, for what it is, and the interior is old and worn but neat as a pin. There are children running up and down the halls, and two young women stand arm in arm at the telephone in the hall, speaking into the receiver together. He falters, lost for a moment, and frowns as he looks up one hallway, then the other. 

David wanders up and down the halls for a few minutes, lamenting the fact that he didn’t stop to think about how the very nature of the hostel would make the rooms essentially indistinguishable from each other, when a voice asks, “Can I help you?” 

He really, _really_ doesn’t want to involve anyone else in this project, but a quick glance at the clock on the wall shows him he’s basically out of time.

“Yes, hi. I was looking for Captain Brewer?”

“He’s out at the moment,” the man says, crossing his arms and shifting his weight back on his heels. He’s a tall man, broad-shouldered and olive skinned, the stubble of several days competing with the wind-swept angles of his hair for attention. He’s got a military-issue shirt on, with the sleeves cut and cuffed, so David assumes he’s no longer active duty. He wonders who this man is, and if he serves with Patrick, and suddenly David feels like he’s standing barefoot in a hall of knives, the lights out and his heart racing. “Can I pass a message along for you?”

“No, I — I have something for him. An invitation? I was hoping to deliver it.”

“Oh, well. I can give it to him, if you’d like? Or, his room is the third on the right,” the man says, gesturing over David’s shoulder. David glances behind him and chews on the inside of his cheek. He knows the best way to make sure Patrick gets the invitation in time is to have another human being hand it to him, but. David doesn’t know this man, doesn’t know how Patrick knows this man, is set on edge by the drab olive fabric. 

“That’s perfect, thank you.” David turns and walks quickly towards the door that’s third on the right, glancing behind him to see the man give him a small nod of approval. David slipped the envelope under the door, the gentles hiss of the paper across the floorboards.

“What did you say your name was, again?”

David stands from a crouch and smiles in a way that stretches his face but doesn’t light his eyes. “I didn’t. But I suppose that was my mistake. I’m David. David Rose.”

“Giovanni. Carson. I’ll make sure to tell Pat— Captain Brewer you stopped by looking for him.

It’s not the first time in his life that someone has spoken to him with barely veiled suspicion, and it sets David on his guard. “Thank you.”

As he’s walking away he thinks he hears this Giovanni person say something under his breath, but he doesn’t glance back over his shoulder to see. The striped trousers that ended four inches from his ankle and the pink pocket square had perhaps not his best choice this morning. The last thing he wants to do is cause any trouble for Patrick, and he has the sinking feeling that he just might have. 

David had asked the world to make room for him so long ago that he forgets, sometimes, that the limits of tolerance are closer than they appear to be. 

It’s been a while since his early, raucous 20s, though, and David no longer seeks those kinds of thrills out. In comparison his look is quite tame these days, though perhaps not tame enough for the Giovanni Carson's of the world. 

He shouldn’t have come here. 

He won’t again, to save Patrick the grief.

 _Things will be better one day_ , his mother whispers, and David closes his eyes and takes a deep, fortifying breath on the sidewalk outside the Gare du Nord. He blows it out slowly, and steps back out onto the street to hail a taxi back to the _Gaston_.

The Avant-goût is not yet serving diners, and David is able to catch one of the waiters as they set out table linens for the evening and make his request. The young man promises to pass it on to the chef, and there are David’s plans, set and ready. He makes his way up to his room, though it’s early yet. He wants to rest and take a long bath — shave and clean and prepare himself, for whatever tonight is going to bring. He shivers at the thought as he unlocks his door, as he steps into the cold, drafty room. 

He wishes he’d sprung for the room with the larger fireplace, not the campfire masquerading itself as a hearth. It takes the work of a minute to get the floo opened and the fire lit, the extra logs put atop it. The rain had brought with it an icy nip to the air, which had settled over Paris as the day went on. The first warm days of spring were finally here, the news was keen on saying. The drudgery of winter was over, the cold a memory and the malaise that would grip him a thing of the past. He looks out of the large windows at the rain pinging against the glass and snorts. 

He gets his record player going as the room begins to warm, the heat of the crackling fireplace doing as much as it could to take the chill from the air, though it would never quite be enough for him. He’d wanted to be laid back, approachable, casual and effortless; what he does instead is take out his favorite sweater, the one that had traveled the world with him and would be making its debut tonight. The knit had fuzzed over years of wear, but if anything it gave the delicate stitching an even more rugged, elegant formality that could be dressed up, or dressed down. It’s black with a ring of black stars lined in gray around his throat, gray and white zigzags over his chest and upper shoulders, and it’s so soft it feels like the fluffiest of summer clouds. He sets it on the bed to breathe and unfolds his black trousers with the gray piping, before stripping himself down and getting himself into the bath. 

It takes him less than an hour to bathe and prepare himself for the evening, a dot of cologne behind each earlobe, his sweater on and his thick, comfortable socks at his feet. He makes a quick call down to the concierge to be sure that his dinner order has been received and everything will be brought up by nine.

David flicks his eyes down at his wrist, and sees that the minute hand hasn’t crept forward nearly as much as it should have, given how long he’s been ready for Patrick’s arrival. He does some quick mental math in his head, picking up the heavy black handset and dialing the long international number to the gallery back home. He crosses his fingers and sinks into the deep velvet pile of the chair next to him. It’s going on noon back home, which means there’s every chance no one will pick up and he will have gone anot-

“— Rose Galleries, this is Twyla.”

“Hey,” David says, his tone landing somewhere between brusque and cordial. “It’s me.”

“Me— David! Hi! How’s France?”

“French. How’s the gallery?”

“Oh, you know,” he can see her now, one hip pressed to the edge of her solid oak desk, the afternoon sunlight bouncing off the sand-pale slats of wood that line the floor of his gallery as her hands wave through the air and her smile practically leaps off her face. “Pretty normal! A decent amount of foot traffic when we closed the Capa show,” she sounds surprised, and honestly so is David. His space is usually far more avant-garde than black and white photography, but there was only so much one could do in the limited market and David had found something deeply evocative in the man’s monochromatic work. 

“Good! And the new installation?”

“Got moved in like a dream.”

David feels an untold tension slip off of his shoulders. A great many people think he doesn’t care, and he spends far more energy than he would like keeping up those particular appearances, but. He’s beginning to find a great deal of satisfaction in the little building that could, and can, and is continuing to, at a time when people need art possibly more than ever before. 

“Perfect,” he says. “Anything else going on I should know about?”

“Um, I don’t — oh! Yes, would you mind telling Mr. Eli that I found the financial statements he was asking about when he called? I tried getting back to him this afternoon but his secretary said he was out, and he made it sound pretty urgent when he and I spoke last.”

“What financial statements?”

“Um, for the gallery? Mr. Eli said you would need the last twelve months, but we usually only have six to hand, you know, so I said I’d get him the others from the files in the basement, but. You know. Then the whole secretary thing.”

“Why does Eli need financial statements?”

“Why would I have the answer to that question?”

“Because you _gave him the financial statements_.”

“Mr. Eli handles all the money, why _wouldn’t_ he want the financial statements?” There’s a tinge of nervousness in her voice that hadn’t existed thirty seconds ago, and it’s running nails down the chalkboard of all David’s senses. 

“Because. Well. I don’t know! He just, he shouldn’t need statements from the gallery right now! What else did Eli ask for?” There’s a lingering silence on the line, and the longer it stretches, the thinner David feels his patience growing. “Twyla!”

“Okay! Um, I mean. He said he needed the financial statements, obviously, and he asked for the list of artists we’ve shown in the last year. He also asked some questions about...um, gosh, Mr. Carter’s gallery, over on 10th, and the old Mastronni showroom, you know, the one that used to be running over off west 34th in that little hole in the wall, right next to the little pizza—”

“Yes, Twyla. I remember.” David hadn’t ever forgotten a single gallery he’d sold to, especially not one tucked in next door to some of the best pizza he’d ever had in New York. “I don’t. Did he say _why_ he was asking all these questions?”

“Well, no. But. He made it seem like you already would’ve known the answer to that question.”

David heaves a heavy, weary sign and pinches the bridge of his nose between his fingers. “Of course he did. Okay, just. If he calls again, tell him to call me. Immediately. And no more paperwork to Mr. Eli, okay?”

“Okay, David.” He can hear her little headnod from across the Atlantic. “And. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to cause any trouble between you and Mr. Eli.”

“You didn’t. Or. Maybe you did, I don’t know, but you didn’t do anything wrong, Twyla, so don’t apologize.” It’s not exactly comforting but it’s the closest he’s going to get in this moment. 

“Okay, David. Thanks for calling to check in. Oh, how’s Alexis?”

He’s spared having to answer by a knock at the door, and he managed to stamp down the deep groan in his chest and replace it with something like a polite goodbye as he hangs up with Twyla and makes his way across the room.

He has no idea what Eli is up to, but whatever it is, it puts rocks in his belly and lead in the soles of his shoes. He pays enough attention to know they’re already past tax season, and they’ve been doing well enough lately that they’re not in danger of closing, not anymore. He knows that Eli has a tendency to over-assist, a habit picked up from his long partnership with Johnny Rose, but there’s a gentle scratching at the back of David’s brain that tells him _this_ isn’t _that._ He remembers sitting across from Eli, the look in Eli’s eyes when he asked about who David knew in the art world, ran names by him looking for a chink in the armor, a place to store the spoils of war stolen from persecuted people and turned for profit on the blackest kind of market. 

David had stopped thinking of himself as a good person years ago, but even he didn’t have it in him to rip something as beautiful as art itself out of the hands of people who needed it most so that he could spring for larger fireplaces, rarer cuts, a longer-ago vintage. There wasn’t a sparkle in the world that outshone the inequity of blood money.

But none of that explains why Eli is asking _Twyla_ about it, what his plans have to do with her, or the gallery, or the slow but steady progress he’s making for himself there. And the threat to that licks along the edge of his skin like a cold flame. It distracts him, and discombobulates him, which is why — even knowing what time it is, and where he is, and what plan _he has set in motion_ — he’s still a little taken aback to see Patrick standing across from him when he opens the door. 

“‘Ne pas te voir me fait sentir Eiffel’? Really? _That_ is the message you leave me inviting me to dinner?” 

The smile crosses his face unbidden. He could never hope to hide it, or control it, not in that moment with Patrick so charmed, and so annoyed, in his black peacoat. He takes a step back and opens the door wider. “Did you like my cartoon?”

“I’m not used to seeing pornography on my dinner invitations, I’ll admit.”

“Pornography?! What are you talking about?! That’s the _Eiffel Tower,_ ” David says, drawing the words out like saying them more slowly will make them make more sense, and it makes Patrick laugh. He leans forward and presses his cheek to David’s in a soft kiss of greeting, and David kisses back, soft and warm there at his temple. His mother often spoke of men who had _presence,_ men who could command an entire room simply by being in it, but David had never met just such a man until now. “Let me take your coat.”

“It got cold outside,” Patrick says, unbuttoning it with quick flicks of his fingers. “The storm really dropped the temperature. I thought Paris in springtime was all flowers and sunshine.”

“And unseasonable cold snaps,” David says, and then loses the thread of conversation.

Patrick has never looked less like the army Captain David met in a GI bar three nights and a lifetime ago. In a snub to all who might look at him differently, Patrick has decided on a short sleeve, navy blue button-down polo in crisp cotton, the collar tight and high and sharp, tucked into gray trousers slender around his hips and most certainly not in a style in fashion right now. The trousers are slim, cinched with a black leather belt, leading down to black boots. He looks nothing like the earnest, sweet man who took him on a date yesterday. He’s taken a page out of David’s book and dressed his body the way it’s meant to be dressed. That shirt, so simple, so complicated. 

A feeling blooms, slowly and with gentle warmth, inside him. It takes him a moment to peg it as pride.

“David Rose,” he says, offering a hand.

Patrick takes it, bemused, a smile ticking in the corner of his mouth. “What…?”

“Just thought we should introduce ourselves properly,” David murmurs, folding the peacoat over his arm. “I feel like I’m finally meeting the real you.”

Patrick flushes hot, red splashing up his neck and cheeks. It wasn’t at all David’s intent (that’s a lie), but he can’t say he hates the results. “I wasn’t sure what the dress code was for tonight. I assumed I could borrow a sport coat, if that became necessary.”

“Oh, we keep a much more casual standard here, I’m afraid,” and David drags his eyes up and over the front of Patrick’s chest, where a single button is beginning to strain against the deep blue fabric. David wants to give it a medal, it’s working so hard, but he’d far rather relieve all the buttons of their duty. _Later_ , his mind whispers to him as he crosses to the bar cart, hanging Patrick’s coat from a rack in the corner before he unscrews the bottle of Tanqueray and pours them each a shot into the silver cocktail shaker.

He hears Patrick moving behind him, the slow padding around the room which means he’s investigating his surroundings, and even with his eyes on the Campari and vermouth, he can see the room the way Patrick sees it. The rich, textured wallpaper starting to peel in the corners, the subtle warp of the floorboards under the plush pile of carpets. He begins to shake the drinks and feels Patrick’s eyes land on him. 

“I like your room, David.”

“Thank you,” he says quietly, pouring them each a cocktail and handing Patrick his glass, fingers sliding between and along Patrick’s with a slow friction that sends heat nesting just below David’s belly button. Patrick takes the glass and drinks, his eyes glued to David’s and David cups Patrick’s shoulder, hand falling on the line between cotton and the bulge of his bicep. “I like your shirt, Patrick.”

David doesn’t miss the way his eyes go wide by a fraction of an inch, the way his pupils expand and his nostrils flare, the line of his throat moving slowly. “It’s new,” he says, his voice a low hum, and David nods a little, approving sound escaping the back of his throat. 

“Confession? I’d assumed as much. This doesn’t exactly look standard issue captain attire.”

“I’d say it’s not exactly standard issue for any version of me,” Patrick says, and his ears turn bright pink. “But I saw it hanging in the store, and thought. ‘Maybe it could be.’ Besides.” Patrick takes another long drink, his eyes draping a blanket of coals across David’s collarbone, the angle of his shoulder where it joins to the line of his neck. “The only way to know what you thought of it, of me in it, was to wear it here. So?”

The thought… the thought of Patrick shopping for something new, something that showed David the person he really was inside, is appealing on every level. Patrick, trying something new. Patrick, willing to go out on a limb and meet David where he lives. “So?”

“So what do you think of it?”

“I’m pretty sure I just told you I liked the shirt.”

“And the rest of it?”

“There is not a single part of what you’ve chosen to wear that I don’t find appealing.” It’s an easy thing to say, because it’s a true thing, and it’s about clothes, and not the man beneath them. “You’ve got a better eye than you think you do for clothes that compliment your lines.”

Something about the word “lines” makes Patrick lick his lips, and David’s throat is suddenly drier than the desert, despite the drink in his hand. “I’m glad you think so.” And there’s an edge to the spark in Patrick’s eyes that reminds David less of candle flame and more of fireworks, bright and loud and utterly incandescent. David holds his glass across the space between them and Patrick clinks his against it.

David takes a drink and turns, wandering across the small space between the bar cart and the French doors to the balcony. The doors are cracked open, as they almost always are when he’s in the room, because the fresh air always makes him feel less trapped, and that’s become even more important to him since his docking in London. But the air whistling over the gap is damn near freezing, so David pulls them closed with a gentle snap, the noise catching Patrick’s attention from where he’d been browsing through the bottles on the small brass cart.

“Well that’s quite the view,” Patrick says, crossing to the opposite door, leaning against the door jamb, his body angled to mirror David’s. 

“Indeed.”

“How do you ever get used to waking up and seeing things like that?” He’s not looking at David when he asks the question, but he takes another drink, draining his drink and swirling his empty glass in his hands as they watch the cars pass on the rain-slicked road, the lights of the Eiffel Tower dancing in the distance. 

He realizes Patrick is waiting for an answer, and for the first time in a very long time, David doesn’t feel the overpowering urge to deflect. He turns to the bedside table, where his journal is, and opens it. 

He pages through sketches, notes, the anger and fear of his cross-sea voyage in tiny, hard little letters, the more fluid, softer notes a few days ago, where he’d written _I met someone tonight_. It’s near the front, jotted down in blue art-framers pencil, the only thing he’d had in his pocket.

Beauford had been gorgeous, thick black hair braided and tucked into the beanie he habitually wore, but always falling in tight curls round his face, loose at his neck. His mouth had been a cupid’s bow, his long arms as thin and willowy as a dancers, the cut of his hips sharp as glass. His soft, high voice had been like music, like wind chimes near the sea, and he’d carried himself like a mountain. He painted beautiful works, portraits that invited you deeper into the subject’s eyes, but what was found there was always something painful, something heartbreaking. He painted tragedy that masked itself with the commonplace. Meeting him, speaking with him, had changed David’s life.

He’d been brilliant, so brilliant, magnificent in his expertise and his easy understanding of human nature. He’d pegged David at twenty paces, and at the end of his show, twelve of his pieces sold and his pocketbook healthier for it, he’d pulled David aside and told him just how he was ruining his own life.

“The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious,” David reads, quietly, hearing the words in Beauford’s soft voice. “It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead and his eyes are dimmed.”

He looks up from his journal to find Patrick staring at him. “Did you write that?”

“Flattering. No. Albert Einstein did.”

“The physicist?”

“Mmm. A beautiful queer African American painter told me so, and I’ve never had cause to believe he was lying to me,” David replies, and closes his journal gently, thumb at the black strap that tied it closed. “I wrote it down because it was the first time I’d ever heard something that so perfectly explained my life.”

Being studied has never felt particularly wonderful to David, but he finds he doesn’t mind when Patrick does it, because he knows it comes from a place of caring. This feeling they’re growing, together. “Why do you say that?”

David shrugs, but feels the slowly tightening vice around his stomach again, his brain flashing back to the call with Twyla, the meeting with Eli, the feeling that the only thing he’s ever built apart from his father is about to come crashing down around his ears. “I don’t mean anything, specifically, just more that. Often the things we see or don’t see come from the things people around us are used to seeing.” Patrick looks at him with a quirked eyebrow and David huffs and racks his brain for the right way to explain the feeling that’s trapped just underneath his tongue.

“I’ve lived my life surrounded by the rich. My mother took me to soirees before I could walk. I grew up in a mansion in the richest area of upstate New York. I went to boarding school with boys of my social class, the sons of politicians and railroad money and steel magnates. I went to Harvard — not because I deserved to be there, because I didn’t, but because my father paid for me to go there. I hated every minute of it. I grew up the spoiled son of a fading movie actress and a man who owns the publishing industry.” 

He’s trembling; he hates it. He just wants Patrick to fully understand what he’s getting into. What he’s throwing himself into. He clenches his eyes shut, shaking his head. “Beauford, the artist who said that to me. He was trying to tell me that there’s another world out there that I can’t see. It’s only been — it’s only been in the last year or so that I’ve started to realize that he’s right. I see it with you most of all, but it’s hard, even now. I’m afraid by this point...well, I want you to see the full sales bill, as they say. I’m damaged goods Patrick.”

Patrick takes his glass from his hand, sliding David’s fingers between his own until they’re laced tightly together. He takes a step forward and presses his lips there to David’s knuckle, the curve of his forefinger curled in Patrick’s. “There’s nothing damaged about you.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” David says, wet and awful. “You need to understand what this is. Who I am.”

“And who are you, exactly?” Patrick asks, and reaches up to brush his thumb over David’s jaw, the dip of his chin. “Because I see a man who sailed across an ocean to save his sister. I see a man who’s trying his best, just as we all are.”

He shakes his head, swallowing hard, and finds himself embarrassed, uncertain. “I’m a coward, in every sense of the word.” 

Patrick’s gaze goes impossibly soft and far away. “I slept with her. Rachel. Before I left for overseas.”

David’s mind wheels at another hard right in the conversation, and wonders if this is just how Patrick talks, his mind hopping from one thing to another in a pattern David can’t see until he gets some space from it. Patrick, as his own sort of impressionism. “Okay.”

“I didn’t. I mean. We shouldn’t have, but she wanted to. She thought we were in love — we _were_ in love — and I knew that I was taking so much from her by leaving that when she asked…”

“You said yes.” There isn’t any judgement in his voice, because there isn’t any judgement in his mind. Already, with what he knows of Patrick, he knows he wouldn’t have said no to her. “Of course you said yes.” David nudges Patrick’s boot with the toe of his wingtips, and Patrick looks up from where his stare had been burning a hole in the floorboards. His eyes are glassy, and it could be the alcohol, or it could be whatever’s hiding at the back of his throat to catch at his voice when he speaks.

“I didn’t tell her. Before I left. I didn’t tell her the truth, and I left her living in a lie that I _knew_ I wouldn’t be able to give her when I came home, because it was easier. It promised her a wedding, and a home, and a life, before leaving the country to put myself in the kind of situation people just don’t promise comebacks from.”

“You were a teenager.”

“I was a coward.”

“Nothing about you could be called cowardly,” he says quickly, and firmly, his eyes blazing with a fire that makes the pads of his fingers tingle. 

“If I’m not, you’re not.”

“I’m not sur—” 

“If _I’m not_ , _you’re not_.” Patrick says it like he needs it to be true, for both of them, and David feels a light, golden kind of warmth lick along the length of his spine. David presses his lips together and nods. “Good. Agreed.” 

And Patrick reaches out for David’s glass at the same moment that David reaches for Patrick’s, their bodies pressing into each other’s space so quickly that David reflexively takes a step back and the hand that had been headed for his glass lands on his hip, instead, Patrick pulling against his body just enough to fight gravity and the sudden flinch of startled instincts. David straightens and drops his arm so that he’s boxing in Patrick’s wrist, and their chests are an inch apart, David’s eyes trained on the bow in Patrick’s upper lip, while Patrick’s gaze leaves lines of fire over David’s Adam’s Apple and the line of his jaw. 

Patrick’s mouth is on a collision course with David’s, whose eyelashes flutter closed as his senses focus on the gentle puff of Patrick’s breath, the dig of his fingers into the gentle swell of David’s hip, when there’s a knock at the door and the fingers tighten their grip, Patrick’s forehead coming to land on David’s chest, instead.

“That would be—”

“Dinner, yeah,” David says, his voice hoarse. Patrick chuckles and presses a gentle kiss to the center of David’s sternum. 

“Then let’s eat, David.” 

The guest services attendant rolls in a trolly with covered plates, a basket full of still steaming bread, wine glasses. It’s the work of a moment for the attendant to lay the small table near the fireplace with table linens and plates, glasses and cups. David tips him, and in another moment they’re alone in the quiet golden light of his room. “I hope you don’t mind that I chose tonight’s menu,” he says quietly, and lets himself take in the sight of the man across the room, haloed by soft white curtains and the city lights of Paris at his back. He’s standing with his hand in his pocket, fingers of the other loose around his glass. Possibilities exist in the long line of his torso, the hard, square strength of his hips, the plane of his chest and the curve of his biceps in that unexpected shirt of his. He looks a little bit dangerous, and David allows himself to be amused at the thought, allows himself to feel the prick of fear down deep. 

“I don’t mind,” Patrick replies quietly, crossing the room. His eyes haven’t dropped from David’s once. “You have at every meal so far.” 

David feels blood rush to his face and he opens his mouth to defend himself, or apologize, or ask Patrick what he would like to order, then, when Patrick holds up a hand, stopping David’s spiral cold. “I don’t mind, David. I... enjoy, watching you move through a world you know so well with a confidence you’ve earned.”

David wants to say _fuck dinner_ , and that’s how he knows he has to pull Patrick’s chair out for him. He wants to tip Patrick over the edge of his bed, and that’s how he knows he has to uncork the wine. He’s chosen something simple tonight, as simple a fare as the Avant-goût is likely ever to get — a pot roast in sage butter sauce, a potato mash, green beans and asparagus. It reminds him of the little cottages he and Stevie had stayed at during their long trek down the coast of the French Riviera. The food tastes homey and comforting, cozy, and he knows immediately that he’s put Patrick at ease at the soft sigh he gets in return.

It’s better than he thought it would be, Patrick across from him at the little table, the fire at their side and rain pinging lightly against the glass of the patio doors. Something is soothed in him, and a sort of peace drapes gently only his shoulders, over his heart. He pours Patrick a glass of wine, and one for himself. “I looked forward to this all day,” he confesses quietly. 

“Wanted to see me in your room?”

“If I say yes?”

“Then I’ll tell you that I looked forward to this all night,” Patrick says, and smiles with delight when David laughs. “Was that too forward?”

“You know what you want. That can never be too forward.”

“I’ve never done this before,” Patrick says, warm. “It kind of feels like a dream. Like I’m not really me, but also… the most me I’ve ever been. Does that make sense?”

This man. _This man_. “Yes,” he says, and feels his joy like an ache in his throat. “Yes, it makes sense.”

Patrick laughs, rueful and amused, and unfolds his napkin onto his lap. “If my parents could only see me now.”

“Would they be happy for you?”

“I think… I think they’d be relieved.”

“How so?”

Patrick shakes his head. “My mom never understood why I stayed so long with Rachel. I think maybe — I think she knew. Long before I did. That I’m this way.”

David chews on that for a minute, thoughtful. “ _‘This way’.”_

“What?”

“You’re not ready to name it yet, are you?”

“No,” Patrick says, quietly, after a beat. “Not yet. Maybe not ever. Is that...is that okay?”

“There is no right or wrong here. You do what feels good for you. To you,” David murmurs, picks up his fork, tucking in. “Were you expecting me to say yes?”

“You had a word. For the painter, the man who talked to you about Einstein.” Patrick mirrors David’s movements and loads food onto his fork, but doesn’t eat it. 

“He had a word for himself.” David tries not to sound condescending, and must come close because Patrick nods and hums as he wraps his lips around his fork. “You use whatever words feel at home in your mouth, and if that feeling changes, so do the words.”

“Simple as that?”

“Simple as that,” David says, as he watches Patrick cut himself a bite of meat, his fingers strong where they press against the knife. “Of course, that doesn't mean it’s all _simple_ , but. When is life ever simple?”

“I’ll drink to that,” Patrick says, holding his glass out to David, who picks his up from the table and joins the impromptu toast with a warm feeling blossoming in his belly. 

The food is comforting and delicious after the steady diet of profiteroles and champagne David has been living on for the past week. It loosens his tongue and lowers his guard, enough that when Patrick answers a question, he allows himself to answer it.

“What about you, David? What would your parents think if they could see you now?”

“Probably nothing complimentary,” David says before he can stop himself, and Patrick’s eyebrows shoot immediately to his hairline.

“I have a hard time believing that.”

“You’ve never met them.”

“Well that’s certainly true. Tell me. About them.”

David takes a deep breath and leans back in his chair, flipping his hands over and staring at the back of his hands, the clean cut of his fingernails. “I wish there were more to tell, I really do. My mother’s an actress who spent years pulling out her silver hair for a chance at the silver screen, and my father is the magnanimous man about town who was everyone’s friend and no one’s father.” David’s face flushes and he takes a long slow breath, exhaling through his nose. “Alexis came along five years after I did, and our nanny, Adelina, raised us. My mother made fourteen pictures in eight years. She was never home.” 

Airing his family’s dirty laundry. His mother would be horrified; she’d not spoken to him for an entire year when he was twenty-two years old, for daring to speak out of turn to the Boston Gazette about the more unsavory fallout of her Oscar loss in ‘31. He can’t quite stop himself from speaking.

“Likewise, my father was running his empire, buying up magazines and newsprints like he was collecting baseball cards. He made quite the killing during the Depression. At Eli’s guidance, he procured six publishing houses, monopolizing himself in the North American market.”

“Eli?”

“My family’s finance manager.”

“Are you close with him?”

“He’s been my father’s finance manager since long before I was born.” David takes a drink from his wine, as if to wash the bad taste of Eli out of his mouth. “Before my parents were even married. Eli and my father went to college together. They met in the very same dorm hall where I lived, while at Harvard. He’s in Paris now, actually.”

“That seems...inconvenient for helping run a — what did you call it? Monopoly in the North American market?”

David waves his hand through the air. “No, no, he’s here on holiday, now that the Occupation is over. He’s gone back to his favorite hobbies of ships in a bottle, teacup painting, and making my life difficult.”

“How so?” Patrick quirks an eyebrow and picks up his own wine glass, swirling the deep ruby liquid in the bottom of the glass. 

“You don’t want to hear about this.”

“I want to hear about anything you have to tell me, David.”

“He’s just, he’s been calling the gallery, asking questions, bothering my assistant.”

“What kind of questions?”

“Who even knows,” David’s skin feels flush. “Probably something having to do with a deal he wants me to make, the chance to get into — exports,” David says at the last minute, his voice catching on the word _smuggling_ like a bone in his throat. 

Patrick cuts him a glance that peels David back in layers, his eyes hard and cold in a way David hasn’t ever seen them before. It sends a chill up David’s back, which serves to dampen the heat tearing through his solar plexus. “What did you say Eli’s last name was?”

“I didn’t. Why?” The hairs on the back of David’s neck stand up. 

“No reason, I just know some people back home in the agricultural export business — farm life. I thought maybe the name would be familiar, is all.” Patrick takes another long drink, and his eyes don’t leave David’s face. 

“This is a newer venture,” David says, and Patrick nods. “A post-war pivot, if you will.”

“From financial management to art importing? That’s quite the pivot.”

David shrugs. “At the risk of sounding incredibly rude, could we maybe put the final nail in all conversations of Eli for the next 24 hours?” Patrick laughs. “What about you? What’s on the horizon for Captain Brewer, after the war?”

Patrick’s laugh fades into a smile, which shifts into something smaller, the corners of his mouth bent up but his eyes far away again. “You know, I don’t really know. For a long time, I had one very specific picture in my head —” David hums the bridal march and Patrick points at him with the hand still holding his glass “— but now? I don’t know. As easy as that life seemed, it doesn’t seem possible anymore. I don’t know that I want easy if it means slowly suffocating while I’ve got it.”

“So no more Canada, then?”

“Oh, no. It will always be Canada.” He says it with his whole heart, with a tender pride and loving that he’s had in his voice when he’s mentioned Rachel, or his mother. David feels his throat constrict at the knowledge that what Patrick feels for Canada, he’s never felt for any singular place. He’s always built his home in people, and people change, or leave, or change just before they leave, so he’s gotten used to the feeling of wandering while never necessarily being lost.

It’s a brick in the solid wall of Patrick’s goodness, this devotion he feels to the place that raised him, the open country that let him run and yell and fall down cold cellars and have a family that brought him up in a circle of something that looked an awful lot like love. And David knows that if he can have a taste of that, can drink from that well for the next three days, he’ll be sated for the desert of years that stretch out before him. 

“What about you, David? Where do you want to be when this is all over?”

David looks at him, long and lingering, the line of his jaw and the kind set of his eyes, the way his breath makes his chest rise and fall as he watches David, hand resting just below his lower lip in the pretense of wiping away a drink of wine. 

Many years ago, when he was putting more opiates into his body than food and his life was on a collision course for the kind of disaster that was permanent, Sebastien had taken him up, up, up to the top of the Empire State Building, breaking in to walk the construction beams over the upper threshold. He’d been blitzed, stupid, careworn and numb, until he got up on that crossbeam, until all of New York City lay at his feet and he’d realized, with a thrill of terror, that one false step and he’d fall to his death. He’d never felt more alive, walking that crossbeam; exhilarated and for one, crystal clear moment, sure of himself and his place in the world. 

He never thought he’d ever feel that again, yet here he is, sitting across from this beautiful, perfect man, and he’s walking the crossbeam all over again. 

He feels something heavy and solid drop from his shoulder blades to the cradle of his hips. 

His mouth makes a decision before his mind can stop him. 

“With you.” 

The answer catches Patrick off guard, and David forces himself to stay still, his eyes burning into Patrick’s as the second tick by one...two...three…

Patrick stands and pushes the table out of the way, glass and porcelain crashing to the floor as the wooden legs of the table screech across the worn panels of the floor. David reacts a second later, pushing himself forcefully from his chair and crashing into Patrick’s body with a violent intensity. Patrick wraps his hands in the fabric of David’s sweater and David’s hands wrap around Patrick’s biceps, running his thumbs under the navy-blue fabric as he pulls Patrick into the length of his body.

He’d known it would be like this. How could it be anything different? David’s eyes are shut tight and all he can hear is the rush of blood in his ears as Patrick’s mouth opens on his, as Patrick’s tongue licks along the seam of David’s lips, a polite request for entry as every graze of Patrick’s skin against David’s sets him on fire from the inside. David tilts his head and lets his mouth open for Patrick, sucks at Patrick’s tongue as it presses into David’s mouth. David can feel the sound in the back of Patrick’s throat, low and longing, so David does it again, cupping the side of Patrick’s face as he pushes his hips ever so slightly forward, a sinuous roll of his hips to see if — to see. Patrick makes a low, wild noise between them, shaking and terrible, and he grabs David’s hips tight in both hands.

For a long, suspended moment Patrick just breathes between them, each exhale a shudder, each inhale a wild and shaking thing. David mistakes it for terror, begins to pull away, but Patrick grips his hips ever tighter, holding him still. David can feel how hard he is, the steel bar of his cock jerking against David’s own. Tenderness comes up over him in a wave and he cradles Patrick’s face gently in his hands. “Okay?”

Patrick shakes his head, once, eyes clenched closed. He moans something, low and broken deep in his throat. “You — you feel—”

“It’s okay to be overwhelmed,” David murmurs, and when Patrick looks up he can’t help but gentle his hold even more. “You’re trembling.”

“I’ve never felt anything like this.”

“Do you like it?”

Patrick’s face breaks, a flash of emotion there and gone again in a moment. “David, I’ve spent most of my life not knowing what right is supposed to feel like,” he says, choked and devastated. There’s a gloss of tears in his eyes that David hurts to see. He wants to pull Patrick into the circle of his arms, tuck him down under his chin, and for the first time since he met Patrick, he’s able to give in to the urge. Patrick wraps his arms around David’s middle and David hugs him as tightly as he can, pressing him close there to the steady beat of his heart. “Then I met you, and everything changed. You — this — makes me feel right.”

No one has ever said anything so beautiful to him in his entire life. How such simple words can have such a heavy impact, David will never know — how words could so move him, and so hurt him, he will never understand. “‘I’m going to make you feel good, so good, the best you’ve ever felt before,” he says, and realizes he’s never spoken truer words in his life. “Is that okay?”

Patrick laughs, wet and awful, there against David’s throat. “Yes, David. Yes, it's okay.”

“You’ll stop me? If I scare you? If you’re overwhelmed?”

Patrick looks up at him and David presses a thumb there to his cheek, brushing the tear that’s escaped away. “Yes.”

“You promise? It’s important.”

“I promise.”

He looks down into those Bambi eyes, at Patrick’s sweet, scared face, and strokes the pad of his thumb there to the tense lines of his mouth. “There’s no need to be frightened.”

“I’m not.”

 _Oh, sweetheart._ “You are,” David says, pressing a kiss to the furrow of Patrick’s brow. “You don’t have to be. We’re going to play.”

“Play?”

“Mhm. Sex is supposed to be fun,” he says, and tickles his fingers down Patrick’s sides. Patrick explodes with laughter, jerking away from him, and David wraps both arms around him and squeezes him as tightly as he can, as Patrick laughs into his shoulder and thumps him on the arm. “See? Play,” he says, nuzzling his smile into Patrick’s ear. “Doing what feels good.”

Patrick keeps his face buried there, at his shoulder, but David is a patient man. After a minute or two of soaking in each other’s heat, Patrick… starts to play.

It’s such sweet, gorgeous discovery, watching Patrick navigate his body. Patrick leans forward into a kiss, almost shy, but he knows how to do this better than anyone David’s ever kissed. His tongue is strong and sure when it slides against David’s own, leading, _guiding_ , and tingles race down the back of David’s neck, cascading into showers behind his ears and over his chest. Each kiss begins and ends with another, and soon David can't breathe, can’t _think_ , with how good this feels. Patrick’s hands slide up, up, his shoulders and his throat and into his hair, guiding David into each kiss, every nerve lit up inside him like sparklers on the fourth of July. “Oh,” he gasps, digging his fingers into Patrick’s shoulder, the other sliding down that long, strong back to the dip of his spine. “Look at you.”

“Yeah?” Patrick presses them tighter together, and David curves his body to meet every angle of Patrick’s. _Take what you need, honey. Take it all,_ he thinks wildly. He nudges his thigh forward, there against the heat and hardness of David’s cock, and David feels it in the pit of his gut, the almost violent _yank_ of want that hooks behind his navel and drags down to grasp like a fist around his cock. It’s sudden, how powerfully turned on he is, how much he wants to see Patrick naked in his bed. 

“Yes,” he says, running both hands over the swell of Patrick’s perfect ass. “Does it feel good?”

“You — you feel so good.” Patrick pushing his hands under David’s sweater, cold against his blazing hot skin. He catches David’s lower lip between his teeth, pulling him forward, and that seems to send some unspoken signal to David’s brain, because he immediately begins to walk Patrick backwards. Patrick is breathless, panting into his mouth, and his low moans turn into a soft sound when they finally buttress up against the bed.

David hooks his hands down under Patrick’s knees, lifts, and sends him sprawling back on the mattress.

The laughter that explodes out of Patrick is wild, freeing, _beautiful_. David smirks, yanking his sweater over his head, and Patrick is pink faced with his own amusement, giggling helplessly as he hooks a foot around David’s thigh, trying to pull him forward. David makes quick work of unlacing Patrick’s boots, toeing off his own loafers, and sends two pairs of socks to the floor, along with his sweater. Patrick shimmies backwards on the bed, smiling, and David kneewalks his way up onto the mattress until he’s hovering over Patrick’s bright, soft face. 

Slowly, slowly, David lays down on top of Patrick, his arms bracketing Patrick’s head as he lets gravity and the force of his desire pull him into the soft mattress. Patrick’s eyes are amused, bright, but as the solidity of David’s body pushes against his, settles, David watches the fog come up over his eyes as he realizes his position, as he feels all the emotions that come with it. The first time David lay under a man, the first time a man pushed him into a mattress with the weight of his body, he became so overwhelmed he came in his trousers, heavy, heaving spurts against the solid weight over him. 

He waits, and watches Patrick’s face, and it’s _everything_. Patrick squirms beneath him, gasping like he’s just run a half-mile, his eyes enormous in his face. He moans with broken little whimpers, sounds he doesn’t even seem to be aware he’s making, and David runs his fingers through his hair, gentles him. 

It’s as if Patrick has just realized he’s male. His hands skitter over David’s back, nervous and wanting; stroke over David’s big shoulders, the wide expanse of his biceps, the solid barrel of his chest. He presses his hips up into David’s with fretful little jerks, and David thinks _Yes, oh God_ , and strokes a hand down under Patrick’s ass, shows him how to roll his hips, how to rub up against him, different than with a woman yet gorgeously, gloriously, the same. The sound Patrick makes is guttural and disbelieving, shocked. His hips move, following David’s low, slow rhythm like a newborn fawn finding their feet for the first time.

“Like that,” he murmurs against the column of Patrick’s throat, the lobe of his ear. It breaks his heart to think of it, of a man so beautiful as Patrick not having enjoyed his body, enjoyed the pleasures it could give him. He’s so new to this and it solidifies David’s urge to be gentle, to be thorough, to give Patrick as much pleasure as he could take.

“Like that, honey, nice and slow,” he says, even as Patrick squeezes his thighs tight around David’s hips, shuddering. His hands roam over the broad expanse of David’s back, his fingers feathering up over David’s shoulders before twisting into the shorter hairs at the back of David’s neck. There’s barely enough to pull, but that doesn’t keep Patrick from trying, the pressure on the back of David’s skull so delicious that he lets a groan escape his chest. 

David kisses him like the treasure he is, deep, soulful strokes of his mouth that leave Patrick shuddering, leave him writhing under David’s body. He wants to take Patrick by the hand and show him all his body could do, all the ways it could feel good, and he wants to do it all at once. The choices are endless, boundless, but David reads the shaking of Patrick’s hands where they grip tight in David’s hair, the wild pounding pulse of his heart under his lips where David has finally relieved that straining button of its duty.

“Fast, this first time,” he says, and Patrick laughs out loud, shaking and ripped out of him. 

“First time? I only ever — once a night, David,” he gasps, as David noses under the buttons of his shirt, licks across the peak of a tiny brown nipple just to hear Patrick bite out of a curse. 

“Mmm,” David says, because he doesn't want to argue, even though he knows better in this singular situation. “We’d better make it count then, hmm?”

He shifts his weight to one hand so that the other can find the peaks and valley of Patrick’s hipbone, the crease of his thigh, the angle of his groin where he’s already hard and hot and waiting for David. He strokes a hand over that long plane and Patrick lets out a cry so beautiful David wants to do everything in his power to hear him do it again. “It’s play,” he reminds him, gentle, gentle, and runs his fingers up the insides of Patrick’s thighs, over his trousers, just to see. Patrick jerks up with a bitten off curse, and David hides his smile in Patrick’s side. “What do you want, honey?”

Patrick’s head rolls from side to side, fretful and lovely and so beautiful David can’t believe Patrick is _his_ in this moment in time. “I don’t — David —”

“It’s okay,” he says, nibbling a little there at Patrick’s chest. The shirt is falling open, caught still with two buttons, but it’s enough to rub his cheek against the hair of Patrick’s chest, the solid line of his ribs, the rasp of his stubble against that soft and fragile skin. Patrick moans, and his fingers find David’s hair, but it’s to tug him away a bit, and David knows why. 

Scars could be sensitive, and David’s stubble is coarse, but maybe Patrick needs gentling with this too. He presses a kiss, there, along that puckered scar of a wound, hand stroking along it’s exit that he found on Patrick’s back just last night. A bullet wound, something that hurt him — something that almost killed him. Patrick is watching him, eyes wide and almost terrified, though not quite. Not quite that. David kisses him there, and once more, because he can’t say the words but he can pour them into the soft warmth of Patrick's skin, make his actions articulate everything he’s trying to say. 

He kisses Patrick’s chest and lets him feel. He nips along the line of his ribs, and some of the wild terror on Patrick’s face recedes as David gently, gently, takes his shirt from him, leaving those big, heavy shoulders on display. He grins, nibbling on the little hood over his belly button, and Patrick snorts out a laugh, _finally_ , and David loves how ticklish he is. He dips his tongue into that little furrow and feels Patrick’s hips judder under his chest, but even that is good, so good, and so sweet. He presses a smile into the flat plane of his belly and sets his chin on it, gazing up at Patrick. “What do you want, honey? How can I make you feel good?”

The laughter fades from Patrick's body as his breath quickens. He pushes up onto an elbow, lifting his arm to press his hand along the line of David's jaw. His thumb rests lightly on David's lips, so David opens his mouth enough to wrap around Patrick's thumb, biting down lightly, the focused pressure sending Patrick's hips skyward as his head drops back between his shoulders. David smiles and does it again, a third time, Patrick's hips stuttering harder each time. 

"David, please."

"Please _what,_ Patrick? Using your words is part of the game."

Patrick huffs out a gentle laugh and nods his head limply. "I don't, I mean, I want. Your mouth. I want your mouth, David."

“Yes, sir,” David says, husky, soft, a world of emotions clogging up his throat. "I like hearing you ask for what you want." He nuzzles his cheek against the soft skin below Patrick's belly button as he deftly undoes the silver buckle of Patrick's belt, his fingers coming to trail lightly over the front of Patrick's fly, popping the button with the percussive little sound of fabric losing tension. 

Patrick goes still as stone as David's breath ghosts over the hard mound of his cock, groans low and long when David mouths at him through the soft fabric clinging to every curve of Patrick's solidly built body. There's a whine in the back of Patrick's throat when David pulls himself away, and Patrick's skin is mottled the most delicious peaches and cream David's ever been graced with seeing. David chuckles, the sound unfurling from his chest like the slow wave of thunder before a storm. He loops his fingers through the clasp of Patrick's belt and pulls slowly, the low _zip_ of fabric on fabric making David breakout in goosebumps. He loops his index fingers through two of the now empty belt loops and pulls the fabric of Patrick's pants down over the swell of hips, and David forces himself to breathe through his nose so he doesn't lose consciousness.

Patrick is hard, and leaking, the front of his white briefs translucent where precome has already left a sizeable damp spot. David's eyes roll in his head and he leans forward to cover the spot with his mouth, to drag the flat of his tongue across it with a soft moan. The smell of men, the husky, iron scent of a man’s precome, the salty bitterness of clean sweat, will forever be David’s undoing. It makes his mouth water, makes him want to bury his face there and never come free, and he takes a selfish moment to do just that. He twists his head and presses his nose, his mouth, to the crease of Patrick’s thigh and _breathes him in_ , the shock of pleasure scratching at the base of his neck, sparking down low to his nipples and between his legs. His hips thrust forward against the bed without his meaning them to, and he groans, low, pressing his cheek there to the long, thick length of Patrick’s perfect, beautiful cock where it strains against the thin cotton.

“Look at you,” he whispers, nosing down low to the swell of his balls. He kisses them, so softly, and he can hear Patrick’s breath stuttering above. He can’t help himself, this singular, impossible moment of selfishness. He slides a hand under Patrick’s ass and lifts, tugging his underwear down to meet his pants before pulling both off the hard jut of his hips, down those impossibly thick, muscled thighs. He pushes them down and off the bed, adds his own to the pile until finally, blessedly, they’re naked together.

“Oh,” he whispers, because he can’t quite help himself. Patrick in his uniform, in his soft blue sweater, in his tight, short-sleeved shirt, is beautiful. But Patrick naked, in his miles of pale skin against the dark gray of David’s bed, is _transcendent_. He presses soft kisses to Patrick’s knees, his thighs, the line where the hair of his legs begins to thin, then up, up, to where he wants to be most. Patrick’s chest is heaving with each breath, and David hears the want as much as he hears the fear. Gently, gently, he nudges his shoulders under Patrick’s thighs and _pushes_ , moving him sideways and up to the head of the bed to make more room for himself. Patrick’s fingers scrabble at his shoulders, surprise falling from his lips like leaves, “Oh!”, as if he can’t conceive a partner being strong enough to move him so easily. He’s so small and compact, Patrick, that David can’t help nudging him just a little more before he settles. 

This is where he’s wanted to be since he met this perfect man. Here, right here, belly-down on a bed, his mouth inches from that gorgeous cock and those thick thighs pressed up high on his shoulders.

Patrick has his arm thrown over his eyes, mouth turned to bite at his own bicep. His cock is jumping, jerking, leaving wet trails like tears on his pale skin, and he’s gasping, breathing so hard his chest is heaving.

David hums, lowers his head, and blows a raspberry onto Patrick’s belly. 

The laughter explodes out of Patrick like a shot and he drops his arm, laughing, to look down at David. “Seriously?”

“Get out of your head,” David says, smiling against that soft skin, kissing, kissing. “It’s fun, Patrick. I promise, you’re going to have a ball.” He presses a soft, smacking kiss right there to Patrick’s hip, then one a little more gently to the head of his wet, wet cock. Patrick moans mid-laugh, shaking his head. “It’s okay to enjoy this. It’s okay to laugh.”

“You’re _ridiculous_ ,” Patrick says, cheeks pink, but he can’t stop laughing, tugging on David’s ear. “I am having fun.”

“Good,” David says, and pushes Patrick’s thigh a little higher up onto his shoulder before nosing down that long, thick length. The head of his cock is shiny and wet and David kisses there, gently, gently, and watches the blurt of precome spill over the little slit. It’s _ludicrously_ flattering, and he rubs his lips there just to feel the texture of that slick cockhead against his lips. 

He licks, softly, and just once, to accustom himself to Patrick’s taste. He’s salty and bitter, as all men are, but underlying that is something uniquely Patrick, something he can’t quite place, but which smells like the heat under his arms, the taste of his neck. David moans, he can’t help it, and Patrick does too, gasping. 

“Are you planning on holding the bed in a choke hold all night?” he asks against the head of Patrick’s cock.

“Wh — what —”

David slips a hand up and taps, gently, at the fist Patrick’s made of the blankets, the straining tendons of his knuckles, and Patrick let's go immediately, his fingers gone white from the stress of his hold. “Put your fingers in my hair.”

“I’ll hurt you.”

“Mmm, good. I like it when it hurts a bit.”

Patrick chokes out a laugh, shaking his head with his eyes clenched shut. “You can’t — you can’t just say those things, David.”

“Who says?” David asks, and loops his arms around Patrick’s thighs, reaching for his hands. He ducks his head to nuzzle Patrick’s cock at the same moment he guides Patrick’s fingers to his hair, and gets exactly the reaction he wants. Patrick _keens_ , his fingers tightening for one impossible moment before he remembers himself, before he loosens his hold and pets, shaking. David hums, low, and looks up at Patrick only to find those dark eyes already on him. 

He daren’t look away, not in this moment. He wants Patrick to see, to watch him. He opens his mouth, and guides Patrick’s cock in.

His moan is lost under Patrick’s, but oh, _oh_ , David loves this. He always has, has never felt more powerful than when he’s on his knees, on his belly, worshipping a beautiful cock. Patrick’s is the most beautiful he’s ever seen and feels so good sliding between his lips, bumping against his soft palette. 

He tightens his mouth and _sucks_ and Patrick wails somewhere above him, his fingers knotting tight in his hair. He’s teased Patrick enough, he decides, and gets to work sucking as hard as he dares with a man as stunned as Patrick. Slow, steady, but firm and hard, David works Patrick until he’s almost sobbing, until the muscles in his thighs are jittering and taut around David’s ears. He looks up, can’t help it — Patrick’s big arms straining, his thighs pushed back and up, his face a torture of pleasure. As if sensing David’s gaze he opens his eyes and looks down, whimpering, and cups David’s cheek, his thumb rubbing along the seam of David’s mouth where it stretches around Patrick. 

David presses his tongue to the slit, dipping his tongue downward, ready to catch the next spurt of precome, hollowing his cheeks as Patrick tightens his fist in David's hair again, pulling until tears spring to the corners of David's eyes. Every muscle in his body is taut and David has had enough bodies beneath him in his life to read the primal, elementary languages they all share. He knows what's coming, and he bobs his head, pulling Patrick into the back of his throat as he gags, loud and wet. Patrick comes with a shout that seems to catch him off guard, even as David digs his fingers into the dip of Patrick's hip, holds him still as he swallows every drop Patrick has for him, cleans him with soft, broad strokes of his tongue.

He stops when he feels Patrick start to go soft in his mouth, and when he sits up on his elbows to get a full view of Patrick's face, he's blocked by the smooth pale expanse of tricep, Patrick's adorable vulnerability buried in the crook of his elbow. He ducks his head and nips playfully at Patrick's inner thigh, but he doesn’t hear the laugh he’s expecting. He doesn’t hear anything at all, actually, but the slow return of Patrick’s breath to a normal pace. 

No. It’s not normal. 

He knows, immediately, what’s happening, and in truth he’d been half expecting it. He lets Patrick’s thighs slide down from where they’re wrapped around his head and he hoists himself up, up, over that trembling belly, over that sweat-slick chest, to that arm, still thrown over Patrick’s face. He kisses the outside of his elbow, the tense line of his forearm, that shaking mouth. “It’s okay,” he says softly, but doesn’t try to move Patrick’s arm. He knows better. He strokes through that short hair with as much gentleness as he can, slides to one side so Patrick can get up if he needs to. Put space between them, if he needs to. “It’s alright Patrick. Look at me.” He puts enough command in his voice that he knows Patrick won’t be able to resist it, knows he’ll revert to his military background and, true to form, he takes one more deep breath before he lowers his arm, his lip caught between his teeth so hard the skin is white, his eyes downcast and a beautiful blush sitting high on his cheeks. 

David puts a single finger gently beneath Patrick’s chin and guides his face until it’s turned towards David and Patrick has no choice but to screw his eyes shut or finally meet David’s eyes. What he sees when Patrick looks at him reaches into the four chambers of his heart and seals them closed like purse strings. There’s heat, still, the slowly fading edge of a devastating lust. There’s fear, and something that just screams _overwhelmed_ the longer David looks. And there’s...embarrassment? Shame? David’s stomach drops and he’s opening his mouth to find a way to take it all back, when Patrick kisses him again, softly, his eyes no different when he pulls back.

“What was that for?”

Patrick’s jaw drops, and it’s such a comedic effect, David would be laughing if he wasn’t waiting for an answer. Patrick huffs out a little breath of air and when he speaks his voice is raw and rough. “Really?” David nods. “David, that was — I have _never_ felt something like that before. And I don’t just mean…” his eyes flick down to where his cock is resting limply against his thigh, nestled in a thatch of curly amber hair.

“...the part where I sucked your dick?”

Patrick nods. “Yeah. That. Although that was.” He makes a face that brings a warmth to David’s chest and another rush of blood to his painfully hard cock. “I mean that I’ve never, it’s never — I never come that fast, not like that. Not even when I was just starting to figure out how all of this worked. I’m so sorry.”

 _Oh._ Something about Patrick clicks into place for David, the turn of the kaleidoscope that brings things from chaos to pattern. He’s embarrassed for something that’s so overwhelming erotic to David, and the unassuming way Patrick turns him on in everything he does threatens to cut him off at the knees. And because he can, and because the last thing he wants Patrick feeling is inferior, even to himself, he takes Patrick’s mouth in another blazing kiss, pressing him back into the mattress, trailing his lips down the cut of his jaw, over the heat of his pulse point, sucking gently at the pale skin behind his ear. “You’re the sweetest man I’ve ever met,” he says, quietly there into the shell of that soft ear. “Patrick. Did you enjoy it?”

“Enjoy it? David, I — well, you saw. It was so fast,” Patrick says, mortified, and David wants to gather him up in his arms and squeeze him. “I. I don’t know what I’m doing. What do I do?”

“Anything you like. That’s why we call it play,” he says softly.

David is still turned on — powerfully, painfully aroused — but the urgency has started to fade. He kisses that soft mouth again, then once more, and stands from the bed, padding across the room to the mess of the table. The plates survived unscathed but one of the wine glasses didn’t. Thankfully, they only need one. He pulls the cork out with his teeth and glances to the bed, to where Patrick is sitting up, flushed and beautiful, a gorgeous boy naked in his bed. He pours a glass and downs it as he walks back to the bed, the crisp, tart notes of the berries in the wine clearing his head, then fills it once more and hands it to Patrick. “There’s something I’ve been dying to do since I met you.”

Patrick flushes to the roots of his hair, and David wants to squeeze his cheeks. Years from now he knows he’ll remember this sweet, fizzing moment for what it is: the first, aching flush of affection. 

He presses a tender kiss there to Patrick’s head, and walks over to his record player. It’s a portable one, not as good as the one he uses for his salons, but close. The record is a first printing, hard to get a hold of, and it’s traveled with him for so many years that the cover has gone soft with use. He slides it out with care and sets it on the player, adjusting the needle just so. 

The tinkling notes of _The Very Thought of You_ begin to play, and David holds out a hand.

Patrick stares at him, naked and shy, from the bed. “What?”

“You’re going to leave me standing here alone?”

“We’re…”

“So?” 

Uncertainty, painful and sincere, crosses that lovely face. His eyes dart once, to the window, but David had closed the curtains. Even if he hadn’t… even if he hadn’t. 

He beckons again. Waiting, with gentle patience. “Well?”

He’s nervous about being nude, David knows. Nervous about so much more than that. He stands, almost hiding, his body curled just the slightest bit inwards. He doesn’t seem to know what to do with his hands, and David isn’t a monster. He meets him halfway, tugging him close to kiss that gorgeous mouth. “You may be asking yourself, ‘who leads in this kind of situation’? Or, ‘are we really going to dance naked’? The answer, Patrick, is that neither of us lead, because this isn’t the mambo, and yes, yes, we’re going to dance naked.”

Patrick laughs, like David had hoped he would, and he guides Patrick in, close, lacing their fingers together and laying them gently on his own chest. Patrick takes the last half-step forward, the fear starting to fade from his eyes now. “It’s alright. We’re playing, remember? Doing what feels good.”

Patrick hesitates for a final second before letting his other hand land on David’s hip, his feet closing the last bit of distance between them. David makes the smallest noise of approval, and of course Patrick hears it, his gaze immediately cutting to David’s, his smile finally shucking the last of its shyness as he and David begin to sway together to the music. After a beat, his head falls onto David’s shoulder, their entwined hands still trapped between them. David can feel Patrick’s heartbeat through the back of his palm, it’s steady rhythm a grounding counterpoint to the music, and just for a second, David lets his eyes slip closed. 

He writes this moment in stone on the deepest part of him, the part that time and cynicism won’t ever be able to touch. He carves it next to the truths that form the solid mass of his core. He’s always liked to think of himself like...like burnt toast, or the inside of a campfire marshmallow, cracked and blackened and overwhelmingly bitter. But when he takes this moment and adds it to the small list of moments at the center of his life, he can feel the intoxicating pull of _something different_ and it’s enough that he’s pressing back the lump in his throat and focusing on the press of breath out of his lungs so he doesn’t break into a sob. There’s only enough room for one overwhelmed man in this room, and tonight, as he’s already decided, is all about Patrick. 

The song ends, the fuzzy hiss of the record’s central hub filling the space where the music had just been. David should really go reset the record, at least lift the arm so he’s not wearing down the needle, but. He’s not sure there’s a force on this Earth that could get him to disentangle himself from Patrick right now, to walk away from the warm heat of his body, the calloused brush of thumb over the swell of David’s hip, the slight tickle on David’s chin where Patrick’s short hair brushes against him. 

“I didn’t know it could be like this,” Patrick says softly, his voice sonorous in the white noise of the room. 

“Dancing?”

“Any of it.”

“And what is it like, Patrick?”

“What do you mean?”

David rests his chin on the top of Patrick’s head and smiles to no one. God, how he wishes he’d had someone to do this for him when he was younger and all he’d needed was someone to sit him down and force him to see the forest for the trees, to put his thoughts in enough of an order that he didn’t spend almost a decade chasing something like a pattern. That he gets to be that for someone like Patrick is a gift he could have never dreamed for himself. He knows the responsibility is staggering, knows it could all go terribly wrong. It just doesn’t feel like that, at this moment. “How does it feel?”

He feels Patrick’s lips curve against the bare plane of his chest. “Freeing.”

“Well, we’re dancing naked in the middle of a drafty room,” David says, just to get Patrick to shake with laughter. “I don’t know how much more freeing we could get here, honey. Maybe if we were in the middle of a meadow, breeze on our asses.”

“Why do I feel like that’s spoken from personal experience?”

“It was a _very_ secluded meadow. How was I supposed to know that it was personal property?” David says, and he feels Patrick’s laugh in the shake of his shoulders, the gentle vibrations that pass from his chest into David’s. Patrick presses his lips to David’s sternum and David’s a smart enough man to know what’s coming right before it does — but not enough time to stop it, as Patrick blows a loud, wet raspberry right onto David’s chest.

It tickles, and on instinct, David pushes Patrick away and slaps out at him like he used to do with Alexis when they were both small, ducking and dodging around Adelina to pull one another’s hair or smear boot black on the other’s cheek. Patrick laughs and stumbles backwards, feinting to the left and going back in to poke at David’s hip. David pivots, his hands coming up to block his face, muscle memory in the face of years of boarding school. Patrick sees his defensive stance and his eyes go wide, sparkling, and he does the same, putting his dukes up and pretending to jab in David’s direction once, twice, before he ducks to the right this time and pokes David on the shoulder before dancing away again. David slaps out at him ineffectually, and misses, and it’s just enough that now he’s irritated at himself for missing. He takes a few steps in Patrick’s direction, but Patrick steps away in time, and suddenly David is chasing Patrick around the space, their laughter bouncing off the walls until David manages to wraps his arms around Patrick from behind, using his extra height to lever them both sideways and onto the waiting mattress. 

They’re laughing, and Patrick is holding his ribs, his arms wrapped on top of David’s, pressing the both of them together while they try to regain their breath. David’s been with other men, of course he has, but none of them have ever fit him quite like Patrick fits him, even tangled together all elbows and knees on the bed, giggling like schoolboys. He smiles into the kiss he presses to the back of Patrick’s shoulder, his neck, his ear. “What a dirty fighter.”

“I’ll have you know I was on my high school wrestling team. We went to regionals,” Patrick says, and squirms in his arms enough that David loosens his hold to let Patrick turn over to face him. He’s bright-eyed, flushed with laughter and happiness, and David feels the swoop in his chest, even if he can’t name it. “I have never fought dirty a day in my life.”

“You _poked me_ ,” David says, all ruffled dignity, and taps a thumb to Patrick’s chin. “Not just once. Twice!”

The delight on that cute face is almost more than he can stand. “You need to work on your defenses.”

“Oh Patrick. Haven’t you figured it out by now?”

“What?”

“I don’t have defenses, honey. Not when it comes to you.”

Patrick’s face goes slack. He studies David for endless moments, and David lets him look, lets him see all that there is to see. All he feels, and all they’ve built together over three days that have felt like a lifetime. He’s so happy he feels like he could float away, and Patrick lets out a low, shuddering sigh. “I — David, I want to…”

He nudges his thigh up and Patrick gasps. Hadn’t even realized he’d gotten hard again, lamb. David smiles, running his hands down Patrick’s back, his flanks, the swell of his ass. “Mm?”

“Can I kiss you?”

“Kiss me? Of course. Right here? On my cheek?” He gets the annoyed glare he was hoping for, and grins, turning his head to bare the stubbled line of his jaw. “Is that what you want?”

“You are something else, David Rose,” Patrick says, and hip-checks him with such sudden strength that David doesn’t quite know what’s happened until he’s blinking up at the hotel room ceiling. He bursts into laughter and Patrick pops into his field of vision, hair a mess, face flushed, grinning with triumph. He clambers up onto David’s thighs and snakes his fingers around David’s wrists, pressing him down to the bed, smiling, smiling, smiling. “Got you.”

“You did,” David says, and tries once to get free. He knew it would be a fruitless endeavor, but the way he’s pinned, the _strength_ with which he’s been pinned, reminds him how painfully, painfully aroused he is. He hardens again immediately, so fast his head swims, and now it’s his turn to get embarrassed as his body speaks for him what he would hesitate to say in words. 

Patrick glances down, once, before meeting his eyes again. “You were very good to me.”

“I’m going to continue to be good to you. This isn’t a one and done sort of situation. For either of us,” he says, bucking his hips up once against Patrick, not nearly close enough to rub cock-to-cock but enough to remind himself of Patrick’s strength. That a man is pinning him down. “Look at you, honey. You’re gorgeous, aren’t you? I’d live on my knees, sucking your cock, if you’d let me.”

Patrick’s flushes scarlet, his fingers loosen, and David makes his move. He shoves up, hard, and rolls them to the left, and in seconds he’s back to where they started, him on top, holding Patrick down with the full weight of his hips, his chest, his arms. Patrick moans, once, _wild_ , before he’s grappling again and David ends up on his back once more, head hanging off the bed. “You’re a sneaky shit David,” he says, and David laughs out loud, elated and feeling a little bit like he’s got a star caught under his ribs, sparkling and bright. Patrick grabs him by the hips and squirms them backwards a bit, just so David’s head isn’t hanging off the bed anymore, and then a little bit more so he can press David’s wrists to the mattress above their heads. David tries to buck him off again but Patrick is hard and unyielding, pinning him with arms and legs to the bed. “Are you going to be good?”

“Not even a little bit,” he says, laughing, pushing against him just so Patrick will push back. “I would, though.”

“What’s that?”

“Live on my knees.” He shivers, once, because the salt of Patrick’s come is still bitter at the back of his tongue, caught in the corners of his mouth. He loses the thread of the game for a second licking the edge of his lips, and his nipples prickle into hard tips at the flavor of Patrick’s come. “You taste so good.”

Patrick’s eyes trace his mouth, flushed to the roots of his hair. “You liked it?”

“I loved it. I almost came from it,” he says, and watches Patrick look down again, over David’s belly, the curve of his hips, to where he’s so hard and straining. “The smell of you. It gets inside me, makes me so hard. My balls get to aching, did you know that? Just from the scent of you.”

“No, I didn’t know,” Patrick whispers, and David watches as his beautiful dick jerks, once, against the air. 

_Oh darling_ , he thinks, and wants to wrap his arms around Patrick’s neck and never, ever let go. “Will you let me suck you again?”

“No,” Patrick says, and David didn’t realize what a vulnerable position he’d put himself in to be hurt by the refusal, but Patrick squeezes his wrists, gently. “It isn’t my turn.”

“That’s not the way sex works.” 

“I want to learn, David.”

So earnest. So beautiful. He relaxes against the bed, the tension he hadn’t even known he was carrying in his shoulders leaving him in a rush. He’s been in one-sided situations before, with men who couldn’t, or wouldn’t, admit to what they felt when they were with him. Sebastien hadn’t touched his cock once in the year David spent in his bed. When he’d thought about deepening the intimacy that he and Patrick were beginning to share, he hadn’t known how this was going to go, not really. If Patrick would be receptive to intimacy at all — if Patrick would only feel comfortable taking the dominant role in their love making. In all the scenarios David had thought of, in this very bed and unable to sleep the past three nights, this is the one situation he hadn’t expected. 

David isn’t one to be very introspective, but he realizes that he’s nervous. That he’s a little scared. It’s been a long time since — a long time. He hides that as best he can, and nudges at Patrick’s hold until Patrick loosens his grip on his wrists. 

He reaches up and cradles that lovely face, thumbs at each cheek bone. “What do you want to learn, Patrick?”

Patrick closes his eyes, turns his face into David’s palm as he’d done on the bridge a thousand years ago. Two days ago. He presses a kiss there to the base of David’s thumb. “I want to taste you, David. Can I do that? Is that okay?”

“Yes,” David says on a low, slow breath. “Yes, you can do that.”

Patrick nips gently at the small stretch of skin he’d just kissed so gently, and when he opens his eyes to look at David, they’re dark and focused and it makes David’s skin go hot and cold all at once. Patrick gives him a little nod, resolute, firm, and then he’s moving, nudging, sliding his way down David’s body. David’s thighs fall open and Patrick uses strong fingers and a steady grip to guide one of David’s calves over his shoulder, his tongue dipping tentatively into the valley where thigh meets hip, and David hums, low and longing. “ _Oh_ ,” Patrick whispers. He looks so _surprised_. “You smell so good.”

“Do I?” David asks, arousal fisting in his gut so painfully the muscles in his belly jerk. “What do I smell like?”

But Patrick is lost to him, so focused on nuzzling against him that David’s heart tries to crawl right up out of his throat. Patrick does it again, and a third time, and it’s so fucking dizzying that David thinks he could live here, just like this, with Patrick lapping at him like a cat, David’s dripping cock coming within breath’s distance of Patrick’s beautiful mouth on every pass. 

And in an instant, it’s almost more than David can take. He whimpers, and presses his thumb into the hollow of Patrick’s cheek, which earns him a chuckle as Patrick places a gentle kiss to the tip of David’s cock before switching to the other side and starting the same slow, languid licking. Patrick’s learned so much already, and it’s a heady swirl that makes David dizzy even as he’s lying down. He closes his eyes and breathes through his nose, so he’s not watching when Patrick open his mouth and wraps his pink, perfect lips around the head of David’s cock. 

David’s hips fly off the bed, and almost on instinct there’s a forearm across his hip bones, pressing him down, and when David looks at Patrick’s face, he’s got a look of surprise written there that makes David’s heart flip. He looks like he had no idea that he could, that he was capable, but the second he sees David’s face and finds nothing but approval, he smiles a little bigger, presses a little harder, and returns David’s dick to the warm, waiting heat of his mouth. 

It’s clear that Patrick’s never done this before, but it’s also clear to David that he’s never had a partner who’s been this excited to do this before. Patrick bobs his head a few times, slowly, taking David deeper into his mouth each time, before he moves too deep too fast and gags, the pressure explosive as it wraps around David. David bites into his lip to muffle a groan, and Patrick pulls off with a filthy sound, gasping. He looks up at David with tears in the corner of his eyes, his cheeks a deep red as he coughs a few times and wipes his hand across the back of his mouth, which is dark pink and swollen and completely wrecked.

It makes David ache, deep inside, and he can’t stop the almost reverent, “My God,” that pours out of his mouth. 

“You taste so good,” Patrick says, shuddering into it, rubbing his cheek along the long, hard length of David’s cock like he can’t help himself. Like he’d rub David’s cock all over him, if given half the chance. “Jesus, David. I want to bottle that taste like wine,” and before David can react Patrick’s got his dick back in his mouth, pressing against the edge of his gag reflex as he hollows out his cheeks and sucks, gently at first and then with an increasing pressure. David’s fists curl into the sheets like he wants to curl them in Patrick’s hair, but. Patrick is getting into a rhythm and he doesn’t want to throw him, or do something he hasn’t made clear he wants, and they have time. Not much time, but enough time for David to figure out the sides of Patrick that may or may not like having his hair pulled. 

“L-like that, honey,” he says, and forces himself to let go of his handfuls of blanket, trying to be as gentle as he can as he thumbs Patrick’s chin softly, stroking the stretched corner of his mouth. “You’re doing — you’re doing so well. Look at you.”

Patrick looks up, and the picture he makes will follow David to the grave. He’s sprawled out between David’s legs, his own cock plumping up on his thigh, but he doesn’t even seem to have noticed. All David can see are the wide-set, pale shoulders, the flush high on his cheeks, the dreamy, lost, hazed sheen of his eyes, and that mouth, _that mouth_. He’s stuffed himself full, lips spread in a perfect, beautiful circle, swollen pink around the drive of David’s cock. He’s not small by any man’s estimation, but Patrick is trying, trying, his fist tight around what he can’t suck, making sounds David has never heard anyone make, like a starving man offered a feast. David strokes his neck, his throat, and Patrick whimpers there between his legs, and David is fucking _lost_. 

He comes, bright and hot and torn from his body with a growl, and the pleasure that comes over him feels like it was mined from a deep well. Patrick presses the flat of his tongue to the space beneath the head of David’s dick and drags it upward toward the slit, the hollow of his cheeks and the wet, low-tide sound of spit draining down the back of Patrick’s throat, and he can feel Patrick’s shoulder go tense beneath the drape of his leg, can feel the way his fingers dig into David’s hips. He keeps his mouth wrapped around David as he comes, pulsing and hot and long. David knows how much he comes, knows it’s a lot, knows Patrick has never had a man in his mouth before. 

As soon as he gets his breath back, he says, “It’s o-okay to spit. There, on the carpet. You don’t have to,” and it shouldn’t be as erotic as it is, the sound of spit in the quiet of the room, against the drone in David’s ears. Fuck. _Fuck_. He drops his foot to the floor and sits up, looping his arms under Patrick’s and hauling him up the bed and kissing him the way David has never kissed another person in his life. Patrick’s mouth and lips are coated with come and David licks it out, takes it in, and Patrick is making wounded, terrible sounds, beautiful sounds, overwhelmed and shaking and David hugs him so hard that their bones creak. 

It takes a long time before he can let go, loosen his hold. A little longer before Patrick can look at him, where he’s tucked in against his throat. The blush has faded from his beautiful face, and when he looks at David, all the heartbreak they’re going to experience in three days is right there for all the world to see. Patrick makes a low, broken sound and David says, “No, no,” and hugs him even tighter, pressing kisses to his temple, his brow, his sweet mouth. “You are stunning. My God, do you even know how beautiful you are?” he whispers into Patrick’s hair, and Patrick traces a loose pattern over David’s ribs. 

Patrick sighs so shakily he sounds like he’s crying, and David squeezes him even tighter, because he can, because Patrick is so beautiful and so brave. “It was, I mean — you have to tell me h-how it was, David. Part of learning is honest critical feedback.” 

“Gold star pupil, top of the class, highest marks,” David blurts immediately, kissing Patrick’s temple, his cheek, his nose. 

Patrick laughs wetly and digs a finger in under David’s ribs, and he jerks, laugher bubbling so naturally out of his throat he’s starting to forget there was ever a time in his life when it didn’t always live there, ready to spring forth bright and clear, like a spring day long before the first thaw. He looks up, those soft, honey-brown eyes creased with joy, and David’s cheeks hurt he’s smiling so much. He strokes his thumb down the side of Patrick’s face once, before he lifts up from Patrick’s arms just enough to grab the blankets, pull them up over themselves. 

They’re heavy blankets, cozy against the chill of the room, fire-warmed. It’s an easy thing to tuck Patrick in, warm and snug against him. Patrick fits him so well. “You smell like me,” he says softly, rubbing the soft plane of that cheek with his nose. 

“I do?” Patrick asks, and David rubs his thumb against that swollen lower lip, ducking down to kiss him again, then once more. “Do you like it?”

“I love it. I love it, Patrick.” 

Much more than he should at this point. 

So fast. 

Not fast enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> David's note translates as "not seeing you makes me feel Eiffel", which David wrote in French 100% to troll Patrick.
> 
> The artist David references, Beauford Delaney, was an actual human person, and a pretty fucking cool one at that. You should take a few extra minutes to [read about him](http://www.artnet.com/artists/beauford-delaney/).


	5. Chapter Five

Patrick isn't sure what wakes him, only that one moment his eyes are shut and the next they're not. His heart has lodged itself in his throat and it's pounding out a staccato beat so loud it drowns out the sound of rain against the glass, the sound sharp and aggressive as the storm outside rages. 

Patrick's eyes scan the corners of the room and he runs through the facts at hand to him. His name is Patrick Brewer. He's naked. He's warm. There's an arm around him, heavy and warm low on his hip. The window in front of him shows a rain-speckled outline of the Eiffel Tower and there's a pile of dishes and linen in the corner by the fireplace.

That’s what brings him back, the jagged edge of a pale cream salad plate jagged in the slate and navy storm lit room. He hears the crashing of the plates, feels the heavy press of palms into his hips, and a single word fills his brain:

_David._

The taste of him. His skin. The way he cried out. The sound of David’s pulse racing in his thigh, where Patrick had pressed his ear while sucking, sucking, mouth full and jaw aching and his entire world consumed by that single act. The smell of him, the way David filled every sense, the heat of his skin. The overwhelming weight of his cock on Patrick’s tongue. 

Patrick’s addicted. First time and he knew he would be, _he knew it,_ in that quiet and forgotten place he doesn’t allow himself to linger in. David. All it had taken was one touch and Patrick had known he was doomed.

David is a hard line behind him, his skin so warm. At some point in the night he’d pressed his thigh between Patrick’s own, his shoulder resting against the curve of Patrick’s ribs down to the small of his back. He’s nosed right into the hollow of Patrick’s neck, snuffling there in sleep. 

Hot tears spring to his eyes and he touches a hand, trembling, to the one David has looped around his waist. Possessive. Strong. So gentle on him, so gentle _to_ him tonight. He laces his fingers through David’s and doesn’t allow himself to notice how much bigger they are than his own, the heavy wrist, the dark hair scattered on his big knuckles. He brings David’s hand to his mouth and presses a kiss to the back, then again, then once more, these hands that have brought him so much pleasure, and showed him so much of himself.

“Patrick,” David mumbles, a burr at his back, and the tears burn a hot trail down his temple. He presses another kiss to that hand, and another, tucking it there against his throat and clenching his eyes shut against the back of David’s fingers. David shifts behind him, his thigh sliding between Patrick’s, his chest against Patrick’s back, the tickle of hair against his ribs and spine. He lifts up, noses a kiss to Patrick’s ear, his temple, and turns his head just enough. 

“Hey,” David says softly, concern in his sleep-blurred voice, but Patrick twists around to face David and wraps his arms around his neck, kisses him before he can say more. David is still trying to speak, thumb at Patrick’s chin, but he drives his tongue into that soft, beautiful mouth and David follows his lead. 

He’s never kissed someone like he kisses David; never been kissed the way David kisses him. Possession, yes, and heat, yes, but there’s something more. Tenderness, maybe, in the way he holds Patrick like something eminently breakable. Caring, in the way he strokes his hands down Patrick’s trembling back. They make him feel like anything is possible, if he just asks for it. 

He’s hard. He’s never been harder in his goddamned life. 

“Please,” he gasps, there into David’s cheek, his throat. “Please, David.” 

“You don’t need to beg, not ever, not with me,” David says, the hand on Patrick’s hip scooting him in close before dragging down slowly and wrapping around Patrick’s hardening length. Patrick hisses and presses his forehead to David’s, his fingers trembling where they’re resting on his shoulder. 

David strokes him slowly, his lips pressing soft kisses to the crest of Patrick’s cheeks, the bridge of his nose, the bow of his upper lip. Patrick smiles at the attention, every part of his body at the mercy of David, the soft pass of his lips and the savage twist of his wrist on the upstroke. “I want you to touch me,” David says, like it’s easy to say such things, and Patrick’s hand is on David’s cock so fast it feels magnetized. 

Patrick knows what a prick feels like, has had his entire life to touch his own, and yet. There is a borderline between the familiar and the unknown where this experience lives, one that makes him feel like he should be better at what he’s doing while also reminding him that he’s never in his life done anything like this. 

David is heavy and solid in his hand, thick, a vein running up the underside of his shaft that Patrick can’t help but drag the edge of his thumbnail along to see how the sound David makes is different than when he traces it with the pad of his middle finger, presses on it as he hold David in his hand and begins to slowly pump his cock. 

He’s so focused on the way David feels in his hand, he doesn’t realize David’s hand has stopped moving. 

“Hey.” David meets his eyes. “Breathe, baby. We’re here together, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Patrick exhales a shaky breath and makes an animalistic groaning sound when David starts again, the pressure of his hand a delicious counterpoint to the frustratingly slow speed, the friction almost too much until David’s thumb swipes out at the bead of precome on Patrick’s cock and uses it to slick the head, squeezing lightly as another few drops of come make their way onto his hand. 

Patrick tries to copy him, to make his hand move with the same steady, unrelenting rhythm, but he can’t. He can’t bring himself to move with such surety when all he wants to do is this, forever, memorizing the feel of David’s hard, hot cock in the same hand that’s engrained with the memory of military-issue gun metal. On the next stroke, he drops his hand lower and takes David’s balls in his hand, rolls them across his palm, pulls on them the way he likes his own tugged on, and when David decides to match him, Patrick bites down on his lip to keep from finishing right then. 

Patrick’s strokes get faster as his heart begins to race, a slow tightening in his lower belly making his teeth grit and his tongue stick to the roof of his mouth as he tries not to pour out a litany of worship to David’s hands, the delicate strength of his grip, the length of his fingers as he drops his hand from Patrick’s balls even lower, to graze over Patrick’s hole like a whisper of a promise, and in an echo of the previous night, Patrick’s orgasm overtakes him with a suddenness that makes his vision go white and his ears ring a steady, solitary note. And, like last night, he feels the beginning crest of shame begin to build inside him almost immediately, the embarrassment at his lack of staying power poking at the parts of himself so far in shadow even Patrick hasn’t learned where all of them are yet. 

Only this time, it’s hard to linger in that place because David is sinking his teeth into the crest of Patrick’s shoulder, bucking his hips in a stuttering little rut as he spills over Patrick’s fingers, ropes of come that coat Patrick’s lower belly, the back of his knuckles, the wiry curl of hairs that surround the base of his slowly softening cock. 

His chest is heaving against Patrick’s, he’s shuddering and sweat-slick and when he kisses Patrick it feels like coming home, like something as essential as breathing has slotted into place. He’s covered in come, his hand, his chest, his belly, and David huffs laughter into his kiss. 

“There honey, that’s got you relaxed again,” he murmurs, and leans over Patrick, squishing him a bit into the bed, as he reaches for the floor. He comes back with his underwear balled in his fist and wipes Patrick’s chest, his belly, his cock and his hand, kissing each digit and the palm tenderly before giving himself a cursory wipe down as well. 

Something about it, the no-nonsense of it, breaks through his embarrassment and makes him grin, and David rolls his eyes, grumpy, sleepy delight in his face as he snuggles them both back down under the covers. “Shhh. Nighttime. This is when we sleep.” 

“You said I could play,” Patrick says, but allows himself to be cuddled up. “You never specified when.” 

“You’re a menace,” David grumbles, and gives the peak of his shoulder a kiss. He lets out a low, quiet sigh, and Patrick can’t help but echo it.

They settle into peace, until all there is in the world is the rainstorm singing on the veranda outside, the sound of David breathing, his heart under Patrick’s ear. 

The embers of the fire crackle and snap with their soft glow, and Patrick loops his arm around David’s ribs and closes his eyes. 

* 

He comes awake slowly, quietly, like floating up from a deep still calm.

It’s raining — still, or maybe again. The sky is dark and dreary, big heavy clouds full of rainwater letting free their torrent on an unsuspecting Paris. Thunder is booming, a big bass drum in the distance, and Patrick knows it’s going to rain like this all day. For once, the thought of a wet day doesn’t fill him with dread. There’s no room for dread here. 

He thinks the room must be cold — knows it, just from the icy nibble on his nose, his ear — except where he’s buried under the blankets with David. 

He’s like a furnace, David, and an unbidden little memory comes back to him, something he hadn’t thought of in years. It had been a bitterly cold winter, the first year Dad went to war and left Patrick and Mom alone. Blizzard after blizzard had buried their little homestead under so much snow that some days his mother couldn’t open the door, or even a window, let alone get to the barn to feed Millie or the chickens. It had felt like they’d been put into the ground and forgotten, the cold an oppressive and weighing them down so much that it made moving hard. 

He can remember the endless length of endless days with nothing to think about but the cold, lethargic and exhausted and unwilling to move, counterpoint to the days where he thought he’d go crazy, weeping at every little thing because he couldn’t stand to be in those four walls a moment more. Little as he’d been, he’d recognized the fear in his mother’s eyes, understood what the empty hollow of their larder meant. 

But even in those awful days there was a pinprick of warmth, of safety. Every night, his mother would cuddle him up in her arms and they would sleep as close to the kitchen stove as they could, keeping those hot embers of the fire going for fear of what would happen if they didn’t. He can remember the smell of her soap, her skin, the warm weight of her belly and the soft pillow of her breast where she cuddled him up against her, under so many blankets it felt like being in a cocoon, cradled in warmth.

Patrick never thought he’d feel such comfort again in his life. That kind of security was reserved for children who hadn’t yet learned the responsibility of adult life. Patrick had pulled that weight onto his shoulders long ago, and never expected to be free of it again. Yet here he is, tucked under David’s arm. Here he is, with his head pillowed on that shoulder, with the blankets up over their heads, with David’s arm slung over his side. Here he is, David’s sleeping face warm against his skin, the two of them snuggled against each other like puppies, and Patrick is in that tiny homestead all over again, safe and protected and loved. 

_Yes_ , something in him whispers, and is satisfied. 

The rain pounds outside, and thunder rumbles, and Patrick studies David’s beautiful face and memorizes every line and wrinkle and divot. Time passes on its merry way outside the hush of this quiet room, and he studies the crow’s feet that fan out from the corners of each eye, and that heavy, serious, thick brow. He studies the swoop of his hair over David’s forehead, hopelessly mussed from fingers and sweat and sex. He studies those long eyelashes, and that dark, thick stubble, and that full, plush mouth, which had given him so much pleasure last night. 

Patrick doesn’t think he’ll ever feel anything like that again, that first moment when David had taken him into his mouth. He’d — no one had ever. For him. David’s tongue — his mouth — the feeling had been his undoing, and David had been there to catch him, to cradle him in his arms, to hold him and dance with him and tickle him and make it all alright. 

Patrick is never going to be the same again. 

The rain pounds outside, and thunder rumbles, and David makes a low, groaning sound, as if personally affronted by the audacity of the storm that has settled over Paris. He snuffles against Patrick’s ear and neck, pressing kisses to his skin before he’s even properly awake, and Patrick’s entire chest aches with a longing he can’t describe. He scratches his fingers gently through David’s hair and hears him mutter something low and gravely. 

David’s hand slides from where it had been limp over Patrick’s shoulder down over Patrick’s flank and hip and thigh, in one long line. The sound of his palm on Patrick’s skin makes him shiver, makes something deep in him squirm with delight. He squeezes Patrick’s thigh gently before stroking back up over the wings of his shoulder blades, to his neck. “Mmmrning,” he mumbles, low, and cuddles him into a hug.

“Good morning,” Patrick says softly, and those big, dark eyes finally blink open. They’re so close Patrick can see the brown of his iris that darkens into black at his pupil, even dim here in the overcast morning light. 

David’s lashes fall, and his lower lip curls, just a little bit. He’s gorgeous when he’s sleepy, bare in every sense of the word. “You smell nice.”

“I do?”

“Mmhmm. You smell like me,” David says, nuzzling his cheek without knowing what his words have done to Patrick. How hard they’ve hit him. 

He lets his fingers trace those big shoulders, the long, graceful line of David’s neck, the shell of his ear. “You said that last night.” 

David’s lips curve against his skin. “Doesn’t make it less true.”

“You’ve got a possessive streak a mile wide, don’t you?” he asks, because he can’t not. 

“Are you just now discovering this?” David says, his voice a burr of laughter, his hand sliding up and down his back, snuggling up over the base of his neck in a way that makes Patrick’s gut clench. “If it makes you feel better, I take very good care of what’s mine. 

“Is that what I am, David? Yours?” 

As long as he lives he’ll never forget the look on David’s face, tucked under the blankets and hushed there in the little pocket of dark they’ve made for themselves. David, stripped bare of all pretense, gazing at him like a man presented with a gift he never thought he’d be given. It’s yearning, from the curve of his brow, to that soft, full mouth trembled open. 

He doesn’t answer. Can’t. And Patrick doesn’t press, because he already knows that the moment he sat across from David at the bar that first night, David claimed him as his own.

It should fill him with unease. It doesn’t.

“I’m cold,” he says, softly. “It is always this cold?”

David hums and tugs the blankets up higher over them. “The Gaston hasn’t quite recovered from the Occupation. Central heating system is pushed to the big suites, and the rest of us plebes have to make do with tiny fireplaces and rugs. Lucky for us, we’re not getting out of bed,” he says, and Patrick can’t help but chuckle.

“Ever?”

“Never again. This is where we live now, our little warm island paradise.”

“David’s Hollow? Davidstown?”

“St. David, thanks, my island is in a tropical locale,” David says, rubbing the cold tip of his nose against Patrick’s cheek, but that’s alright because Patrick has slipped his cold feet between David’s calves for warmth. “We serve Curaçao liquor at every cabana and the dress code is ‘skin’.”

“Embarrassing,” Patrick murmurs, and can’t help kissing the soft edge of David’s jaw, his cheek, his chin. “The logistics of that just wouldn’t work, David. Nudity isn’t hygienic. I don’t want a naked sous chef brazing my steak.” 

“Nope, no pricking real world logic into my daydream,” David says, and Patrick laughs and kisses his throat as David pulls him close, close, close. 

The second he steps foot out of this bed their night will be over, and Patrick doesn’t want it to be over. He isn’t ready for it to be over. He thinks maybe David feels the same because they stay like that, warm and cuddled, for a long time, long enough for the shadows to move on the wall, long enough for the rain to pick back up. Neither of them make any move to get up, and Patrick really does have a moment to hope that this is the rest of their lives, this little warm bed in this cold, drafty room, where he feels whole for the first time in his godforsaken life. 

David’s stomach whines, loudly, and Patrick feels hot tears prick his eyes for the second time in the last day. He presses one, two, three kisses to the column of David’s throat, tries to laugh. “We’d better feed the beast, hmm?” 

“Stay,” David says suddenly. Quietly. “Here. With me.” 

“Don’t think I could handle the St. David’s dress code,” Patrick says softly, and David pulls back to study him. 

“I’m serious. You have a few days left of your R&R, right? Spend them here. With me.”

Hope burns like a match thrown into a gasoline-soaked wood pile, igniting in him so suddenly that he’s scalded by the backdraft. 

To allow himself to hope is a reckless, stupid thing. Patrick is a soldier. His life belongs to the country he’s serving, and the countrymen he’s protecting. There is evil in this world, Patrick has _seen_ it, and he has done everything in his power to protect those around him from it, shield them from the hatred and the rage. 

He has done everything to protect people just like David, to give him a _choice_. David — beautiful, and so funny, queer, and Jewish. Living his best life, on his terms, comfortable in the knowledge that he did it on the shoulders of his family’s wealth but never taking it for granted. David. Who had traveled the world to save his family, who had taken one look at Patrick and known. He’d seen right to the heart of Patrick, every moment of longing and every exhausted tear shed, and he’d taken him in anyway. 

He doesn’t insult David by telling him he has no idea what he’s doing. That this time they’re sharing is like sand in an hourglass. That what they’re doing to each other is going to hurt far worse than anything either of them has ever experienced, that it’ll leave wounds that will never heal.

Just to have this, for two precious more days. Just to have this, a beautiful moment to tuck deep into his memory, next to the root cellar, and the snow, and the grounding comfort of those who love him. 

He makes his decision, from one breath to the next, because it isn’t really a decision at all. 

David strokes his thumbs under Patrick’s eyes, and when Patrick looks up at him he sees an answered grief, and an answered joy, right there on that beautiful, expressive face. “Yeah?” 

Patrick cups a hand over David’s wrist. He’s trembling so badly he almost can’t speak. “Yes.”

“Good,” David says, with relief, cradling his face. “Good.”

He kisses Patrick with everything they’re not saying, with every moment they’ve experienced together so far, and with all the memories they have yet to make. He thinks of his mother’s homestead, and the crackling of that little kitchen stove, and wonders that he could feel the same safety here, three thousand miles and twenty five years separating him from that moment, in the arms of a man named David Rose. 

Patrick wishes they could stay right here, suspended in this moment forever, but their bodies need tending; David’s belly is gurgling, and Patrick has to use the facilities, and they both desperately need a shower. David laughs, a little bit wet, and Patrick smiles against those soft, full lips, thumbs across that gorgeous jaw. “We have to get out of bed.” 

“Do we?” 

“Unless you can find a way to bring the privy to us, I think my answer is going to have to be yes.” 

David shivers theatrically, but it’s all for show. An act, to hide the strength of what he’s feeling. What they’re both feeling. “If you think the room is cold, the bathroom is going to knock your socks off.” 

“Remind me to tell you about my winter in Bastogne,” Patrick says, and kisses him again before untangling himself. 

David is right, the bathroom is a nightmare. He yelps all the way across the ice-cold tiles, naked as a blue jay; he cringes and hops foot to foot as he turns the shower on to start the warm water going, as he steps in front of the toilet. The very moment after he flushes David is there, carrying half the bedding and wrapping him right back up in it. He grunts and squeezes Patrick into the comforter there with him, teeth chattering as they wait for the shower to get going, for the hot water to finally make its way up those old pipes. 

It takes longer than Patrick had expected, but when he’s finally under that hot spray it’s a wonder. David is gone for just a moment, to dump the blankets back on the bed, before hopping into the water with him, shivering so hard his entire body goes wild with goosebumps. “ _Fuck_ ,” he hisses, and crowds Patrick under the water. “Fuck I hate winter.”

“Technically, it’s spring. It’s spring you hate,” Patrick says, shivering even under the pounding heat of the water, and he looks over his shoulder with a smile. He closes his eyes just in time, as David flicks a handful of water on him, and then Patrick’s arms are back around his waist, pulling him close, desperate to fit as much of both of them under the rush of hot water as he can. 

The sheer presence of David’s body, the maleness of it, makes his breath catch with a need he can’t articulate. David is bigger than him, firm where women are soft, hairy where women are smooth. Nothing about his naked body could be confused with femininity, from the weight of his big shoulders to the thick hair on his chest, his long torso and square hips and his cock, God, his cock Patrick is desperate to have in his mouth again. David’s physicality turns Patrick’s knees to jelly, makes him want to lay back and spread his legs and bare his throat for all that David can do.

David’s tall enough that the water begins to cascade over his shoulders, the pounding rhythm falling across the expanse of his back as Patrick begins to catch small pings of mist off David’s chest. It’s colder, somehow, even as the water begins to steam the bathroom mirror, and he shivers, until David pulls back and puts his hands to Patrick’s shoulders, turning him so that he’s practically leaning against him in the shower.

David’s fingers run across Patrick’s scalp, and he closes his eyes, leaning into the feeling with a feline indulgence that gets a low chuckle out of David. His hands disappear for a beat, and Patrick misses them with such a fierce intensity it makes his lower belly tense and his fingers curl in towards his palms. He hears the gentle clink of bath products and then David’s hands are back in his hair, the smell of cedar and vetiver combining with the rising heat of the bathroom to make Patrick’s muscles go warm and loose, the memory of the frigid tiles distant and dull. 

As David works the shampoo across his scalp, Patrick misses his curly hair, misses the longer strands that would have spilled so deliciously through David’s fingers, and the rosy-cheeked young man who would’ve worn them. He starts to think of all the other little things the military has taken from him over the years, the small losses stacking up like dominoes until his life seems like one giant mosaic of absence, of denial. 

He presses himself more firmly into the long line of David’s body, breathes in the steam and the scent and the presence of him, feels the water sluicing down his legs, over his nipples, between his toes, and he feels….better. More grounded. 

He lets David turn him, his head falling back under the run of water, and David’s fingernails scratch lightly across Patrick’s scalp as he rinses out his hair. Patrick makes little noises that could conceivably be called purring, and David scratches a little harder, presses a kiss to the bridge of his nose. 

When David’s done, he manages to switch places with Patrick quickly, lathering up his own head and chest with remarkable speed, but. Patrick doesn’t mind standing, leaning his back up against the now-warmed tile wall and watching the different paths little rivulets of water take down David’s body. Which would he choose, if he were water? He feels like he’s drunk again, or still, his body warm like it had been in the Club Under The Stairs, but. They haven’t done anything like that. 

The only drug he’s had this morning is David. 

When David finishes and flips the water off, the sudden silence rushes to fill Patrick’s ears. David grabs a towel off the small stand next to the shower and wraps it around Patrick, rubbing his biceps vigorously. He smiles at Patrick as he tussles his hair, towel in hand, even though they both must know his hair will air dry in a matter of minutes. That done, David wraps the towel around Patrick’s shoulders and kisses him again, long and slow and warm as the water now evaporating off Patrick’s skin. 

“I noticed you didn’t bring a bag,” David says as he steps carefully out of the shower, holding a hand out to Patrick and gripping tightly as he steps over the porcelain lip of the tub and onto the too-small bath mat. It’s better than standing on the cold tile, but threadbare enough that — not by much. 

“I didn’t want to presume. I can wear what I wore yesterday back to the hostel.” 

David makes an affronted noise and looks at Patrick over his shoulder with his eyebrows in his hairline. “ _Absolutely_ not.” 

“David, it’s fine.” 

“You wore them yesterday. _All day_ yesterday.” 

“Accurate.” 

“And now you want to wear them again today?” 

“Not _all_ day, just back to the hostel, and. If you think that’s bad, don’t let me tell you about the state of laundry on the front. 

“For the love of God please _never_ tell me.”

“I wore the same trousers for over three months, once,” Patrick musses, much to David’s horror. 

“You did what.” 

“All you really need to change are your underclothes regularly,” he continues, just to watch that funny, animated face twist up. “I’m kidding. It was four months.”

“ _Oh_ my God,” David says, and Patrick helps him dry off a bit, where water has trailed from his soaking wet hair down his neck. 

Patrick taps a finger to David's chin, stubble rasping against his fingertips. “Do you ever shave?” 

“Don't change the subject! Four _months_ Patrick? Did your pants finally just walk away from you?”

“Almost. Your turn — the shaving?” 

“I shave when I remember,” David says, like a liar. He scratches his chin a bit, thoughtful. “Do you like it?” 

The blush burns in his cheeks, but he powers through. “I’ve got beard burn on my thighs.”

David grin, slipping his hands over the curve of Patrick’s hips. “The question stands,” he says, leaning in close and rasping his cheek over Patrick’s. The feeling of those short, painful bristles along the sensitive skin of his cheek sets all of Patrick’s nerves on fire, remembering what those bristles felt somewhere else. He grabs hold of David's flanks so he won’t float away on this feeling. As it is he nearly shivers his way up to his tiptoes to follow David’s touch. “Oh, look at that,” David says, smiling like a rogue against his cheek. “I answered my own question.” 

“No,” he says, negating the words even as he sighs into them, even as he turns his face to make room for David to kiss the line of his throat. “I have to get back to the hostel.” 

“It’s the crack of dawn,” David murmurs against the thin skin at the hinge of his jaw. He noses up to Patrick’s earlobe and sends a crack of lightning down his body, and as he shudders into it David tightens his hold on his hips. 

His voice comes out broken, cracked at the back of his throat where he’s shaking. “It’s — it’s almost ten.”

“Middle of the night,” he whispers, smiling. Whatever else he wants to say is lost at the firm knock of the hotel room door. 

For one terrible, terrible moment every muscle in Patrick’s body locks tight, and cold fear washes him empty. It’s irrational fear, he knows, because though Patrick isn’t stupid — he knows what would happen to him if he was caught here — he’s also pragmatic enough to recognize that no one that could possibly be behind that door _cares_. His commanders know he’s staying at the hostel, but have no idea where he is beyond that. And even… even if they did. _Even if they did._ What the fuck would it matter? What could they do to him that the war hadn’t already done?

 _One more year, and I can drop my papers_ , he thinks, and doesn’t allow himself to consider that he won’t live another year.

He looks up at David. “It’s okay,” he says softly, and reaches behind David to the hook on the wall, taking down the thick, navy blue dressing gown and pressing it to David’s chest. “Go see.”

“I’ll ask them to leave,” David says, yanking the sleeves of his dressing gown on and throwing open the bathroom door. The freezing cold air of the bedroom billows in and sets goosebumps racing across Patrick’s body, but David is just gone for a moment, coming right back carrying Patrick’s trousers and shirt and socks, and the sweater David had been wearing last night. “It’s alright, Patrick, I promise,” he says, and closes the door with a snap behind him. 

He should be scared to death, he thinks, as he tugs on his socks and the pair of shorts David had helpfully loaned him, silky and black and the most comfortable thing he’s ever put against his body. The silk hugs his thighs and feels like sin incarnate. 

He is. He _is_ scared. But for the first time in a longtime, the other things he feels push the fear back down, dull the edges that usually spur him to action, and isn’t _that_ a singularly peculiar sensation. 

The sweater smells like _David_ , the masculinity of his cologne and the dark oaky notes of his skin, the lavender of his washing powder and the citrus of his hair pomade. Patrick wants to drown in it. When he pulls it over his head it’s almost his undoing, all that rich, thick wool whispering over his skin before molding to him, warming instantly with his own body heat. It feels like what caviar must taste like. He’s never giving it back. 

He hears the low burr of Stevie’s voice, and some of the cold panic recedes. It’s not how he'd have chosen to end his moment with David, but David sounds like he’s quickly found the end of his rope, and Patrick has never shied away from a battle in his entire life. He tweaks the collar of his button down, ruffles his fingers through his damp hair, and opens the bathroom door.

“— the creature from the black lagoon,” David is saying furiously, hands slapped over his face, as Stevie waves a sheet of paper at him and hisses, “Not my fault, David!” 

“It _is_ your fault. You know I have a ‘don’t return messages’ policy. I feel like a dog called to heel. Why did you answer the phone anyway? Don’t you have minions to do that for you?”

“Number one, your gross uncle makes everyone feel like a dog being called to heel, you’re not special,” Stevie is saying, darting her eyes to Patrick with much more glee than is strictly warranted at this hour of the morning. She’s brought a rolling cart of what Patrick vaguely recognizes as _breakfast_ , though he can’t recall David calling for any and there are a lot of covered plates on that trolly, and three mugs. “Are we going to talk about this?”

“Absolutely not,” David snaps, and snatches the paper from her hand. “Between you and Alexis, you’ve made it your goal to ruin my life. I have no idea why I even talk to either of you anymore.” 

“Because of my scintillating small talk skills and winning personality,” Stevie replies, though she hasn’t actually looked away from Patrick, and if anything, her shit-eating grin has only grown proportionality. “Hello, Captain Brewer. Whatever could you be doing here at this, the witching hour of our lord, o-dark-thirty?”

“Fixing David’s shower,” he replies, deadpan. 

“Yes, you were,” she says, delight in her dark eyes. She ignores David’s enraged growl from the other side of the room, where he’s dialing the room’s phone to connect to the operator. “Come. Sit.”

“David didn't order breakfast,” he says, walking across the room to her, and not minding nearly so much the way her lips curve. 

“Oh, this is all David’s. He eats enough for five people,” she says, and Patrick glances over his shoulder at where David is glaring like a furious moose. 

“Is this the part where I make some witty comment about him needing his strength?” Patrick asks, daring and bold and out of his goddamned mind, but Stevie just throws her head back and howls with laughter, and Patrick can’t help but smile with her. 

“I like you,” she says, whipping her head towards David. “I like him.” 

“That makes two of us,” David says without a hint of irony, and that gets Stevie’s attention more than any of his supplications or barbs so far. She furrows her eyebrows when she looks at him, but he just holds her gaze, steady, until Patrick clears his throat and rubs a hand across the back of his neck.

“I should — I need to go back to the hostel,” Patrick says to David, his eyes flitting briefly to Stevie, who has wrapped her arms in front of her chest and is back to darting her gaze back and forth between them like she’s watching a tennis match. 

“It’s pouring,” David says, gesturing at the window over Patrick’s shoulder, and as if the grey haze out the window weren’t proof enough, a giant peal of thunder rattles through the room. “Let me at least call you a cab?”

“Room lines are down,” Stevie says quickly, her voice far too chipper for what is ultimately bad news. “You’ll have to go down to the desk.” 

David sighs, slowly, as if gathering all of his patience together like one would sweep together a pile of leaves. “Okay. Okay, Patrick? I’m going to get dressed, run downstairs, call you a cab and see what Eli wants.”

Eli. 

Like a rusty nail scraping over metal, something about the name grinds against Patrick’s senses. He _knows_ he’s heard the name before; it’s going to drive him crazy, but no matter how thoroughly he goes through his mental rolodex, he can’t quite place it. He tries, as David digs clean trousers and another sweater out of his drawers, as he steps into the bathroom but neglects to close the door as he gets dressed, bickering with Stevie all the while from around a wall. Regardless, everything David has told him until now sets him on edge. But he nods towards David and puts an easy smile on his face. He sees the effect it has on David, the ease it puts into his shoulders until he cuts one last glance at Stevie and the annoyance overtakes him again. 

And then David presses a gentle kiss to Patrick’s temple as he walks past him, and takes Patrick’s world out from under him.

It’s so without guile, and so without shame. Such a simple gesture, a kiss to the temple — one of caring and affection. Patrick is under no illusions that Stevie knows what happened last night, God, their unmade bed is right _there_. But Stevie knowing it, and Stevie _seeing_ it, are two different things.

David squeezes his hand, hisses something that sounds like “be good” at Stevie and walks out the door, and then it’s he and Stevie, standing at opposite sides of a cart loaded with baked goods. Patrick’s stared down enemy soldiers over foreign lines and never felt the same roll of his stomach, the same potential disaster if they fail to come to some sort of detente. He opens his mouth to speak, but Stevie goes first, grabbing a couple of tiny plates and sitting down on the loveseat opposite the still-present mess of linen and upturned table leftover from the previous evening’s shenanigans. 

“He’s going to have to pay for that, you know,” she says, gesturing towards the small pile of wreckage. 

“I have a feeling he’d call it a worthwhile expense.” He picks up a piece of _pan au chocolate_ and sits across the coffee table from her, so nervous his stomach clenches. 

“But would you?” She takes a little bit and uses the pad of her middle finger to push an errant crumb into her mouth. The daintiness of the gesture belies the size of the question she’s asking him and he blinks at her, his mind racing to bridge the gap and form words in response to her question. 

“I don’t know that my opinion is going to matter to the Hotel’s balance sheet,” Patrick says carefully, and Stevie snorts with a little roll of her eyes.

“It’s not the Hotel’s balance sheet I’m worried about,” she says, and Patrick flares with equal parts indignation and respect. He’s coming to feel more for David than he’s able to face head-on, but he sees in Stevie someone who protects David, who cares for him deeply and is there to make sure that others do the same, and he can’t begrudge David that. 

“I think, in this case, the hotel’s balance sheet is _all_ you have to be worried about.” He takes a pointed bite of his pastry, the brittle outer flakes practically melting into the warm buttery center, the chocolate bittersweet and still just the tiniest bit warm after it’s trip from the kitchen. It’s delicious in a way a breakfast foods have no right to be, the way all things have tasted in the three days since he met David. He focuses on the tastes and textures as he lets Stevie watch him, let’s her gaze drag over the mess of his drying hair, the wrinkles in the sleeves and hem of David’s sweater, the way his fingers lay against his knee, still and steady. Patrick has been trained to withstand interrogations from enemy combatants, he thinks he can go toe-to-toe with Stevie.

Only, enemy combatants would ostensibly be looking for information, and Stevie is looking for truth, and that becomes far harder to withstand. After almost a full minute of silence, Stevie finishing her pastry and studying him, he clears his throat and quirks an eyebrow a fraction of an inch and she quirks the corner of her mouth in a smile, silently victorious. 

“I was serious when I said I like you, Captain Brewer. And David deserves someone likeable.” 

“David deserves a great many things,” Patrick says before he can stop himself, and he grasps quickly for more words, an insulating layer of wit that will make her stop looking at him like that. “Starting with the vast majority of this delicious breakfast.”

She nods her head and smiles, full and bright. “I have no doubt that he’s currently racing through his conversation with Eli in single syllables, with the express purpose of getting back here as quickly as possible.” 

“Ah, Eli.” Patrick’s skin pricks and he feels his skin go tight around the eyes. It’s the way he always feels when he’s putting together a puzzle, fingers on the first pieces as he tries to lay the framework. “David mentioned an Eli last night, something about his father’s business manager?”

Stevie makes noncommittal humming noise and stands, pulling a large carafe of coffee off the tray, the lower half wrapped in a napkin, steam wafting gently out of the top. She pours herself a cup and adds a steady stream of milk as she speaks. “Eli’s been with the Rose’s since before David was born.”

“He spoke about him like a second father,” Patrick notes plainly. 

“Between Johnny and Eli, David’s manage to scrape together something approximating a father, yes,” she answers, and there’s a sadness to the edge of her voice that makes Patrick want to reach an arm around her shoulder and pull her close, place a kiss to the top of her hair so she gives him that shark-like smile again.

Patrick’s not sure how to ask what he has to ask what’s next on his mind, the puzzle piece not fitting no matter which way he turns the shape. “What is David like, in New York?” 

It’s a change in conversation sudden enough that it takes Stevie an extra second to answer. “He’s David. David is David everywhere.” Patrick doubts that’s entirely true, and his patience is rewarded when she sighs after a moment. “He’s harder. There’s more people to defend against, including those so-called friends of his.”

She looks so personally insulted that he can’t help but ask, “No good?”

“He calls them friends because he is first and foremost a socialite and that’s what socialites have. _Friends_. Air kisses and pearl handbags and frou-frou drinks, Bentley and summer homes on the coast. All they want is to have a taste of his life, and David is so lonely that he’ll shower them with expensive trips and exclusive restaurants and _experiences_ , because he’s convinced himself that’s the only way they’ll stay. Is that what you are, Patrick? Are you the kind of person David already has, or are you the kind of person David needs?” 

Her dark eyes are hard, flint-like and ready to cut him to the bone if he says the wrong thing. It would be deserved. That anyone would ever abuse David’s kindness like that — that he would _let_ them so as to not be alone — makes something shrivel up in Patrick’s soul. It hurts him to the quick, to know David is lonely.

 _You’d never be lonely again, sweetheart, if I had any choice_. 

“I like him. More than anyone I’ve ever — more than anyone,” he says, dropping his gaze to his coffee so he won’t see Stevie’s eyes widen into saucers. So he won’t see the pity on her face. “I can’t promise I won’t hurt him, because I have to. In two days I go back to the war, and this trip becomes a dream, a memory I take out and look at to remind myself there’s more to life than dirt and piss and blood. But — but I swear. In the time I’m here, I won’t hurt him.” 

She blows out a long, low breath. “Well. Fuck.” 

He snorts out a laugh, wet though it is, and he looks up to see the smile flash across her face. “Yes. Fuck.” 

“You’re falling for him. You’ve _fallen_ for him.”

He nods. Simply, quietly. Why lie, when it’s the truth? “Yes.”

“God, you really have no self-preservation instincts at all, do you Brewer?” She leans back in her chair and digs into the pocket of her housecoat, pulling out a tin of cigarettes and a lighter. He tries not to notice that her hand is shaking as she lights. “I came in here ready to talk to you about my body-burying skills and here you are with the ‘ _I like him_ ’ and the cute cheek kisses. How am I going to threaten you _now?_ ”

He feels his ears go hot. “You still can, if it’ll make you feel better.”

“No, I can’t. David is right. You’re a goddamned newborn beagle puppy.”

“Well that’s offensive.”

“It’s all about the eyes,” she muses, and frowns sharply at him. “Eli wants to meet with David today. Make sure that doesn’t happen.”

Alarm bells start singing in his head. “Why so?”

She opens her mouth to speak when they both hear the doorknob begin to rattle and her mouth snaps closed with an audible click. She takes another long pull on her cigarette, draining her coffee and stubbing out what’s left in the dregs at the bottom of the cup. She looks at Patrick square in the eye. “Just, promise me, okay? It’s probably nothing, but. Promise?”

“I promise,” he says, as David comes back in behind them.

His hair is a riot of drying waves, his mouth pinched and his eyes hard. Patrick has seen enough men look just like that to know a thousand things about the conversation he just had. Frustration, anger, Patrick can understand, but it’s the pinprick of panic that twists his stomach inside out. Patrick’s hunches are usually correct, and right now his gut is screaming that Eli is bad news. That he’s someone David views as family only makes it worse. 

Patrick stands, painfully aware that Stevie is watching, but just as unable to help himself. He catches David’s hand, squeezes it gently. “That was fast. Are you okay?”

“I need a cigarette,” David says, and Stevie helpfully offers hers, half-smoked and with a ring of lipstick at the filter. He doesn’t seem to mind, taking a drag from it and closing his eyes tightly. “I’m fine. It’s fine.”

It’s not fine. Anyone with eyes can see that. But, despite all that he and David had shared, it’s only been three days, and Patrick suddenly understands what David wants — to be alone with Stevie. “It’s okay,” he says quietly, as David takes another drag from the cigarette. He doesn’t feel like an intruder, never that — David has spent two days showing him all that Patrick means to him — but he understands family much more than David thinks he does, and Stevie is family in a way Patrick isn’t. Will never have the chance to be. “David, do you still want me to…? 

“Yes,” David says, in a rush, and squeezes his hand tightly. “Patrick. Yes. Go, pack up your things, and come back. I’m sorry, this isn’t how I wanted the morning to go. Do you need help? I can go with you.”

“It’s okay,” he says again, because it is. It is. “I have to settle my bill, get the sheets and bedding sorted. I should be back by mid-afternoon.”

“Good,” David says, on a long, exhaling sigh. Patrick wishes he could smooth away the wrinkles on his forehead, the tension around his eyes, and maybe tonight he can. He will. For now, he knows when it’s time to make a graceful exit. David presses another kiss to the apple of his cheek, strokes a hand down the curve of his jaw, the valley of his throat. Stevie is _right there_ but Patrick can’t help himself, can’t help turning his face to catch David’s mouth with his. That soft, lush mouth, opening to his with such eagerness, such gentleness. 

David kisses Patrick like he means the world to him, and leaves Patrick a puddle at his feet. 

His breath catches when David finally lets go, and he untangles his fingers from the back of David’s neck, where his fingers had slid up to that dark hair without his say so. “I’ll be back soon.”

“You’d better,” David says, softly, as Patrick grabs his coat. He helps him into it, like the gentleman he is, and runs his thumb gently along the inside of his wrist. “Be safe.”

As he’s closing the door behind him, he hears Stevie hiss, “What _happened?_ ”

*

It doesn’t take Patrick long at all to pack his things. Packing largely requires unpacking to begin with, and short of a few items of clothing, a change of shoes, his grooming kit — there isn’t much that isn’t still tucked away in his duffle, the same as it had been when he first arrived at the Gare du Nord. 

He carefully folds the few undershirts still sitting on the chair in the corner, carefully arranges his razor and comb in the small leather pouch they live in. He’s keeping his hands busy to keep his mind busy, a fallback strategy left over from basic training, where he’d work through his thoughts while assembling and disassembling his weapon. He’s turning a puzzle over in his mind, pieces made of David’s face when he’d returned, the disdain in Stevie’s voice when she’d spoken, and stitching it all together, the name Eli. 

He’s half-way through tucking his laces inside his shoes to prevent them from tangling when it hits him, like a cold slap to the face, and his entire body stutters for a halt. He remembers where he’s seen Eli’s name before, and the sinking feeling in his stomach threatens to cement him to the spot. There’s a voice in his head telling him he’s mistaken, misremembering, but. Captain Brewer has made a life of puzzles and would bet his life on the fact that he’s not wrong this time, either. Even if it does mean completely destroying the one thing — the one person — he’s loves, more than anyone in his entire life

When he pulls the sheaf of papers off the desk, his hands are shaking, but that doesn’t keep him from flipping almost immediately to the page he’s looking for. 

It’s buried in the middle of a series of correspondences between his leaders about the first round of potential targets in Patrick’s next mission — the discovery and reclamation of stolen works of art and history, currently floating around the world on a black-market web of profiteers and pissants set on making profit from the pain of others. 

Decoding it had been the last thing Patrick had done before leaving for Paris, and he’d promised himself he’d find time to read his way through it more closely. A promise that had fallen immediately to the wayside the minute that first David-ordered drink had landed at his desk. However, there were certain things that even Patrick’s steel-trap memory couldn't help holding on to, even when he’d rather wish it wouldn’t.

In this case, it’s the single line in the list, bold type, firmly among the list of potential dealers and transporters up for questioning in France: ELI MELAMED HOFFMAN 

Patrick sinks to the foot of the bed. He knew the name had been familiar. He knew it. 

Christ.

It’s there, it’s all _right there,_ and Patrick is an idiot. He should have looked at this the first time David brought up his family’s financial manager, should have thought on why the name was so familiar. Of course it was — here, in black and white, along with thirty other people of interest, operating out of Switzerland, England, France. 

He’s not surprised, necessarily, but in cementing this one answer for himself, he’s opened the door onto a dozen more, far more impossible questions to answer. He can’t tell David — even he’s not fool enough to put a mission as important as this at risk — but he can’t _not_ tell David. He runs his thumb around the outline of the truth, looking for places he might soften it, and finds only edges that will cut deep. 

He takes a deep breath through his nose and walks himself through the problem like he's giving the mission brief to his men.

 _Wealthy businessman, late sixties, wintering in Paris as if the world isn’t fucking burning to embers around him. Comfortable in his life, extremely successful financial manager of sixteen equally wealthy businessmen, including Michael Benedum of Benedum Oil Company, Albert Heathrow of General American Finance, and one Jonathan Michael Rose of Rose Publishing Group. Married to Marlain nee Brown, father of three sons and a daughter, only one of whom has survived to adulthood_ — _Rachel Stanton, married to Governor John Stanton of Rhode Island._

 _Hoffman came on the radar as a potential smuggler early in the war. His name has been attached to four different aliases, all of which have turned up in eight major raids, including in a shipping manifest of Egyptian artifacts headed to private auction in Boston, and listed next to two recent acquisitions with suspicious provenances._

_Recent communications monitoring show attempts to contact P. Graupe, currently under observation as potential point of contact for suspected cross-border access. Hoffman’s financial obligations combined with ready access to alternative identities and means of travel make his detainment and questioning top level priority._

_Connected Persons of Interest:_

_Alexis Miriam Rose (goddaughter): Socialite, last based in Greece, frequently seen with one of several Stavros’; potential national security risk_

_Stephanie Leslie Budd (family acquaintance): Hotel proprietor; co-owner of the Gaston Hotel, frequent ‘home base’ for Hoffman when abroad_

_David Samuel Rose (godson): New York City art gallerist, has garnered increasing prestige and social connections in the Western art world over the last year._

It’s a dark thought, one he can’t escape once it’s in his mind. Down this road is so much trouble for David, because if Eli Hoffman is the man Patrick thinks he is, David will be prosecuted simply for his name, his profession, his _connection_. If he isn’t prosecuted, he’ll remain a name of interest for a long time — his business under a spotlight, his name forever a shadow over plundered art. 

“Fuck,” he says, and closes his eyes. 

It’s not enough of a briefing to answer the questions Patrick really wants to know — how could the wealthy stoop to such disgusting lows to continue being the wealthy, and what role was David about to play in all of this — but it’s enough to remind him that the world spinning around him is so much bigger than the wrap of David’s arms around his waist, the small pink circle his lips press to the long column of David’s throat. 

It takes him another few hours to get the bedding washed and hung to dry in the basement for the hostel owner, and the room cleaned. He falls into the chore easily, letting his mind wander to the problem at hand. There’s a reason Patrick is one of the best in the business, why his leaders traded him around like a baseball card. _Keen analyst’s mind_ , Colonel Mead had told him, when he’d put Patrick up to be tested for the special forces MOS. That was Patrick. A keen mind, and far too clever for his own good. 

Christ, he has no idea what he’s going to say, or how he’s going to talk to David about this. _If_ he should talk to David about this. It’s one thing to say he’s an Army Captain, and quite another to spill top secret information, the mission he’s been given, the push he and his new unit are making into Italy in just a few weeks. 

_So, David, your godfather is a top-level suspect in a major war plundering scheme branching across six countries. How do I know this? Get this_ — _the man you bought a drink for at the GI bar you frequent, the man you took to your bed, is an intelligence specialist and spy._

The thought. _The thought._ Even if it had been serendipity, even if Patrick had truly gotten closer to David for innocent reasons, David would never see it like that. David would be horrified, and rightly so. David would think Patrick had gotten close to him, gotten into his bed, because he was looking for information. 

He’d lose him, forever.

 _You’re going to lose him anyway,_ says the tired soldier’s voice in his head, and Patrick shrinks away from it. 

He lowers his arms from the wash line, where he’s pinning his sheets up. He’s shaking, so hard that he has to sit down, right there, on the cold concrete floor. 

Yes. Yes, he’s going to lose David. In two days he’s going to look into those beautiful dark eyes and kiss that funny, crooked mouth, and say goodbye to the man he’s fallen in love with. He’s going to pack up his duffle and get on his bike and drive away, and David will be in his rearview mirror until he isn’t, and Patrick… Patrick is never going to see him again. 

Yes. He’s going to lose David Rose. But not yet. _Christ_. Not yet. 

He’s given David a few hours. It’s enough, now. The thought of being away from him, when they have so few hours left together, eats at the lining of his throat, fills his mouth with metal. He can’t stand it, not even for one more moment. 

He’s cleaned the room as best as he can, as quickly as he can, and done the linens, as was in the contract he signed for the room. It’s enough of a pain for the manager that he’s leaving early, and he doesn’t want to add more work for her. He does one more pass through the room, checks to make sure he’s gotten all of his toiletries, his clothing, his journal from the bedside table, and the little cigarette case that he’s going to give to David soon, wrapped up in its little brown paper and tied with twine.

He tucks the stack of papers as neatly as he can on the top of his duffle bag and slips his hat over the back of his head, hearing David’s voice in his mind as he pulls it down to meet his ears. He tosses his bag on his shoulder and makes his way to the front desk to discuss payment and leave the address of the Gaston on the off chance that anyone should come looking for him over the next two days. 

* 

It’s still raining outside, though thankfully not anywhere nearly as bad as when Patrick got to the hostel. A dense fog has started rolling in, obscuring the tip of the Eiffel Tower. Before nightfall it would sink down to the ground. Patrick had fought in just such a fog, been laid low by such fog. He’s frozen nearly to death in its clammy embrace, woken up in a wheat field and felt entombed by it. For the first time in many years he’ll be safe under a roof, behind a glass window, when it finally rolls in. 

He gets his rucksack strapped to his bike, not minding the steady drizzle falling even now. The streets of Paris shine bright with rain, mirrored on black asphalt, shimmering in heavily soaked trees. Birds are chirping wildly to each other, as if telling each other _be ready, more is coming!_ He straps his helmet on and revs his engine, gets the old girl out onto the road and heads towards the _Gaston_ as quickly as he dares on rain-filled streets. 

The valet kindly takes his keys and helps him unstrap his rucksack, and Patrick gives the young man a run down on how he has to put her into gear just so or the shift will stick. That he doesn’t speak French, and the young man doesn’t speak English, doesn’t seem to matter in the worldwide language of motorized transportation. The young man beams and takes his keys from him, “Tout le plaisir serait pour moi", and Patrick nods, satisfied.

The early dinner rush has begun, and Patrick should probably be more embarrassed by the state of his clothing, his borrowed sweater that doesn’t at all match his pants, his jacket, the military rucksack he’s carrying. There are ladies in the finest gowns and white furs, patent leather pumps and coiffed hair. The men escorting them are in black tie, suits and shoes and boutonnieres. Patrick doesn’t feel out of place, though — in this particular instance, he doesn’t think he’s the one in the wrong. France was occupied just six months ago — they were still on ration cards and the black market was in full swing. Young men were still dying on French soil, and here they were, the filthy rich and famous, going to dinner at a four-star hotel in their finest pre-war frocks like if they tried hard enough, they could go back to the world before the war. 

There’s no going back. For any of them.

He forgoes the elevator, where too many people in too many fine evening clothes were waiting, and instead takes the stairs. As he gets up to the third-floor landing, something heavy and warm settles in his gut. This landing looks all the same as every other landing — plush dark carpet, chandeliers only a little worse for wear. He doesn’t know why he’d feel like this, but of course he does. Of course he knows. 

This is David’s floor. David’s room is right down the hall. David is inside, waiting for him. He’s going to take Patrick’s hand, and smile, and kiss him, and Patrick is going to feel bright and wild and fearless. Patrick is going to ask for what he wants, and tonight, in the quiet dark, he’s going to ask David to touch him where no one ever had before. 

He’s got his hand on the doorknob when he hears a high-pitched scream echo from deep in the room followed immediately by a hollow, echoing bang and the sound of rustling in the room. He immediately tries the knob but finds the door locked, the muscles across the back of his shoulders automatically tense. His hand flies to the outside of his left thigh, his fingers automatically flexing around the hilt of a gun that isn’t there, and he feels his stomach go cold. 

The terror in his body shouts at him that this is what happens when he lets his guard down, when the shallow comforts of life make him soft around the edges. But the last decade of his life, dawn trainings and midnight skirmishes, make that voice easy to shut out while he forces himself to take three deep breaths as he bends down to quickly remove the shoelace from his boot. He wraps one end around each fist and pulls the woven string tight. He considers it for a minute, judges that it’s the best he can do given the situation, and stands, throwing his shoulder into the door. 

The lock holds surprisingly fast, but the damp wood around it isn’t so lucky. It only takes Patrick two solid, steady strikes of his shoulder against the door to send the thing bursting open, his eyes immediately scanning the room for the intruder, his hands taut and his core tightened in anticipation of quick movement.

“What the hell?!”

“Patrick?!” 

"Oh my God!” 

They’re all speaking at once — Patrick, and David, and the mystery assailant, who is thin and blonde and absolutely _stunning_. She’s staring at him with her brow furrowed and her mouth open mid-yell, a strappy shoe dangling from one finger, the other over against the baseboard, underneath a suspiciously dark mark. There is luggage _everywhere_ , wild pink leather with white trim, hat boxes stacked four deep just inside the door, and of all fucking things, a _bird cage_ with a huge, white cockatiel perched inside. “Who are you?!”

“Who are _you_?” he returns automatically. David just groans and buries his face in his hands. The blonde’s gaze narrows, and her eyes flit back and forth between David and Patrick several times before her eyes pop open in understanding and she registers the name David had shouted in the first clamor of voices. 

“ _You’re_ Patrick?”

And there’s something in the warm familiarity in the way she says it, something almost predatory yet playful, that clicks a lock buried deep in Patrick’s brain, a handful of anecdotes and offhand remarks. “You must be Alexis.” 

Her long, blond hair is in a curtain of movie-star curls, big waves framed around her petite, beautiful face. She flips her hair over her shoulder and drops the hand holding the shoe, doing a coy sort of eye-roll-head-toss move that would put her amongst some of the more dangerous women Patrick has ever come across. “Naturally.” 

“Did you _break down my door_ ,” David says, peeking through his fingers with horror. “Oh my God.” 

“I thought you were in trouble,” Patrick says, flushing scarlet. 

The woman, Alexis, makes a sound he’s not heard outside of a nursery, and squints both eyes at him. “Oh my God, David, like a knight in shining armor. Look! He was going to garrote me with a shoelace!” 

Fuck. “I wasn’t going to garrote you with a shoelace,” he says, letting go of one end of the shoelace and shoving it in his pocket as his face burns. “Hi. Um. Hi. I’m Patrick Brewer.” 

“Yes, you are,” Alexis says, beaming at him. “Oh David, Stevie was right.”

“No. Nope. This is not happening,” David says, stalking towards him. Something flutters in the light of the modest fire David’s gotten going and he makes a sound Patrick has never heard before in his life, something between a cry and a growl like a grizzly bear. His eyes dart, panicked, towards the fire, and Patrick doesn’t get it until he very, very abruptly does. 

“Okay,” he says, pushing his rucksack out of the way with his foot and weaving around the pink luggage. It’s big, as far as moths go, pale-winged and as terrified of being caught indoors as it is anxious to get out. It takes him three swings of his hat before he catches it, and a few seconds more to open the balcony door and set it free outside. 

He closes the balcony door with a snap and a lock, and turns to find David staring at him, and Alexis staring at David. 

“It’s gone,” he says, helpfully, as if they hadn’t just watched him catch it and let it go. “No judgement. Cats scare me to death. If we’re ever in a similar situation, I expect you to gallantly get rid of it and pretend I didn’t run twenty feet in the opposite direction.” 

David’s face softens, so suddenly, that from one moment to the next he turns from Beleaguered Older Rose Sibling to the man Patrick woke up with this morning, the man who had touched him with all the care and reverence of a gentleman, who had kissed him like he was something precious. David pushes his lips to one corner of his mouth, and studies him with such sweet, earnest affection, that Patrick can’t help but return the smile. “What?”

Alexis pops up and pillows her chin on David’s shoulder. “That’s his ‘I like you’ smile, and he, like. _Never_ smiles that smile.” 

“Why would I when you’re around,” he snaps, and she barks out a little laugh as she ducks around him and goes to retrieve the shoe lying on the floor, adding it to its partner and taking both back to the bed. She tosses them on top of an open trunk while she begins to rummage through a giant leather valise. “I’m sorry,” David says, his eyes not leaving his sister as she flits about his room. Patrick watches David watch her and feels a long-held envy spark dully back to life. “Did you somehow forget that this is _my room_?”

“And Stevie is busy getting mine aired out,” she says, not bothering to look up from her bag. “As soon as she’s done, I’ll leave. Trust me, David.”

“You’re staying?” Patrick’s voice sounds odd to his own ears, like — like the Rose siblings are playing an orchestration he hasn’t learned the melody to yet. 

“My sister’s _paramour,”_ the amount of venom in David’s voice is enough that even Alexis pauses in her motions, going stock still before she flicks to life again in a blur of limp-wristed motions and tiny huffs. “Has decided he’ll be hunting for a newer stock on the market.”

“David!”

“So my sister has decided that because _her_ life is ruined, she needs to ruin mine as well. 

“Well, I don’t know that needing a place to stay technically counts as ‘ruining your life’,” Patrick says calmly to David, and knows immediately he’s taken the wrong tack. David’s brow crinkles while Alexis spins with a smile that would rival a cat stuffed full of canaries. 

“Exactly, David. Where else was I supposed to go?”

“Anywhere. Literally anywhere. You have roughly three hundred friends you could have contacted, unless you — oh Alexis,” David groans, and flops into the chair at the small table near the fireplace. The glass and broken plates have been picked up, the floor cleaned. It’s as if nothing ever happened. “How much did you give him this time?”

“Why do you _always_ assume that I gave him money?” Alexis asks, but Patrick has picked up on the anger in her voice, and he abruptly knows everything he needs to know about Alexis’s deadbeat boyfriend. Men who treated ladies like playthings and bank accounts were rogues of the highest order, and that Alexis had associated with just such a man spoke worlds about the sorry state of affairs life had brought her to.

“Because you always do,” David says, exhausted. He looks like a man who has had this very argument countless times, a man very near the end of a rope that somehow keeps getting longer because he just loves his sister that much. “Alexis. He’s a Glücksburg prince. He’s _literally_ Greek royalty. He should be giving _you_ money, not sponging off of you like the bottom feeder he is.” 

“His dad is angry at him,” Alexis says, furious, as she tries to rearrange the suitcase on the bed to get it to close. She’d changed, Patrick realizes, when he sees her traveling poplin dress and hat. 

Patrick helps her take her suitcase off the bed, zipping it for her and setting it with the others. There’s an open trunk with dresses sandwiched in silk shipping liners, and she throws the lid down and plunks down to sit atop it. Her skirt flows around her knees, a bit shorter than Patrick is accustomed to seeing on ladies, and so outrageously in fashion she looks like she’s stepped off a runway. “I don't want to fight,” she announces, crossing her legs and fidgeting with her gold rings, of which she has three.

“Don’t you? Because you could have sent a telegram. Or was that too much for you?”

“How was I to know you’d still be here?” 

“Where _else_ would I go?” David says, anger blazing in his eyes. “I can’t exactly fly back to New York!”

“I didn’t know that the flights had been canceled, when I called you for help!” Alexis says, hands loose at the wrist as she gestures frantically at him. “I wouldn’t have asked for help if I’d known that!”

“Oh my God, Alexis,” David says, and buries his face in his hands. 

“It’s not like you’ve been lonely,” Alexis says, ignoring David’s mute outrage to throw Patrick a smile that, if he’d been susceptible to it, would have taken him out at the knees at twenty paces. 

“I can’t. I can. Not,” David snaps, and stands so quickly the chair scrapes backwards. He makes to move to the veranda — realizes that the moth may still be in residence, dazed from it’s evening adventure — and spins on his heel, to the door Patrick broke through. He stares at the door frame only slightly the worse for wear, broken lock aside, and turns to look at Patrick with disbelief. “Really?”

“Yeah, I’m not sorry,” Patrick says, and David does his disgruntled moose impersonation and stalks out. 

Patrick thinks he should be embarrassed that he’s found himself for the second time today with one of David’s people, alone in a room where not even a day ago he and David had rolled over that bed together.

He’s not embarrassed. Not at all. And that is perhaps the most shameful bit of all. 

“Where did you travel from?”

“Majorca,” Alexis says on a sigh, flipping her hair over her shoulder and crossing her legs again with a humph. “David doesn’t understand the responsibilities of the royal family. Stavros _had_ to leave me there, he got word that the Queen Mother was sick, and there was only passage for one more traveler on the cross-country train. He promised me he’d send for me, but I got tired of waiting.”

Patrick very much doubts that this is how events unfolded, but he’s far too much the gentleman to call a lady’s word into question. “David was really worried about you.”

“I know he was,” and at last, Alexis looks guilty, twisting the edge of her skirt in her hands. “But he didn’t need to come. When I called him for help I was distraught, my emotions were high. He should be able to tell the difference between my distraught voice and my ‘in danger’ voice by now.”

He swallows down the first three responses he has to that, each more judgmental than the last. He settles on, “Are you in danger often?”

“I like to travel, and it’s been a while since that was a _safe_ thing to do.” 

A thousand things about David fall neatly into place, and whatever ember of jealousy Patrick felt at David having a sibling goes up in smoke. “No, things haven’t been the safest for a while.”

She studies her fingers and Patrick’s heart goes out to her. David… from what he’d told Patrick, the way he’d grown up hadn’t been the most normal, or the healthiest. Patrick can see every missed birthday, every lonely night, every problem that money fixed and every ‘no’ that was never said in this flighty, fidgety woman. Abruptly, he feels powerfully, painfully sorry for her. She’d grown up with everything, but nothing that mattered. 

“Are you alright?” 

Her face breaks, once, sharply, before she can get control, and it’s all the answer he needs. “Alexis —”

“Oh my God, Brewer!” Stevie yells at the top of her lungs from the open doorway, and Patrick cringes. She’s the size of a child’s doll, and so angry she looks like she could spit nails. “What did you do to my door!”

He winces. “There was a moth.” 

“It was a blood-sucking bat,” David says from behind her. He’s followed by a half-dozen valets, who quickly begin to gather up Alexis’s luggage. “The room is ready. Get out.”

“Ugh, David, I don’t understand why you need to be so rude,” Alexis hisses, flapping her hands at the valet who had tries to pick up her bird. “No! Ted comes with me.”

“Get Ted and _get out_ ,” David says, glaring at her and nudging her trunk to one of the valets with the toe of his shoe. “Do not come back tonight.”

“Ugh! Fine!” she snaps, and spins on her heel, Ted in tow, and… and _flounces_ from the room, a thing Patrick never thought he’d ever see in his lifetime but there it is, in full color. She flings the door closed behind her, the broken door refusing to catch on the latch and bouncing back open gently. Stevie watches her go, her lips pressed into a thin line, while David stares at the slowly swinging door, his arms crossed and his chest heaving. 

Patrick’s just getting ready to cross to the door when Alexis is back, her hands in front of her, fingertips picking at one another while she swallows and looks towards the ceiling before she speaks again. “Okay, but. When you said not to come back, you meant _after_ dinner, right? Because it’s been such a long day David, and it’s far too late to get ahold of anyone important, you would be _completely_ remiss in your brotherly duties not to accompany me to dinner downstairs.” 

David barks out, “Swallow paint,” and bares his teeth in her direction, but she doesn’t seem phased by it at all. She nods her head in one swift, resolute movement and turns to Stevie. “Dinner still at eight?”

“Uh-huh,” Stevie says, her eyes bright and the world’s most self-satisfied smile plastered on her face. She looks like a child gone snooping, who wakes up on Christmas morning knowing _exactly_ what she’s going to find under the tree. She looks at David over Alexis’s shoulder, and Patrick watches as he glares at her. Stevie bites back a laugh and tells Alexis she’ll let the staff know to set an extra place at David’s table. 

“Fantastic. And Patrick? It was marvelous to meet you. Make sure to vent my brother, or the steam will bring out all the wrinkles he’s been artfully hiding from you.” She winks at him, and sticks her tongue out at David, and then disappears down the hall with a small squeak when David lunges for her, his face beet-red. 

Patrick knows better than to be seen laughing, so he spins on his heel and looks for the appropriate place to drop his duffle amidst the chaos. He settles for the small bench just under the window on the far side of David’s bed, mostly because it gives him the chance to check the weather one more time, and the fact that it’s a long enough distance that by the time he faces David and Stevie again, he’s managed to school his face into something approximating sympathy.

“So. That’s Alexis?”

“That’s Alexis.” David says, his voice heavy with something that hasn’t been there in all the time Patrick’s known David. “The whirling dervish herself.”

“She looked...thin,” Stevie says, her eyes dark as she stares at David. He catches her eye and opens and closes his mouth a few times before he speaks again, tugging at the cuffs of his dress shirt. 

“She always looks thin.”

“David,” Stevie says, and for the first time since Patrick’s been in the orbit of the two of them, he hears admonishment in her voice, a judgement of his choices that until now Patrick had thought Stevie immune to. 

David, at least, seems to take her tone to heart. The shells of his ears turn red, and he shrugs his shoulders guiltily when the silence stretches between them so long that he’s forced to meet her eyes. “She’s fine, Stevie. She’s always fine! And besides. She’s here now.”

“Yeah, she is,” Stevie says, like she’s not fully convinced, and Patrick doesn’t think he’s imagining the way her eyes flick to the broken door — and the hallway behind it — before she trains her focus back on David, and Patrick, and the smatterings of detritus that Alexis left in her wake. “So! Dinner, then?” 

* 

He sees Stevie before she sees him, and it’s just as well, because she’s double-handing cigarettes and Patrick is smart enough to recognize a woman pushed past her limits.

She’s in a beaded green number that brings out her eyes, her dark hair, hugs her hips and the curve of her waist. She’s also wearing a scowl that could strip the paint off a barn. 

“I’m sorry about your door,” Patrick blurts. “In my defense, I thought he was getting murdered.” 

Stevie pins him with a look, and whatever she sees in his face is enough to have her rolling her eyes and poking both cigarettes into her mouth to straighten his tie. He’d changed, of course he had, to the nicest thing he’d brought with him — dark slacks, a white button-down, a dark tie and his knit gray cardigan with the shawl collar, the one he bought some years ago and which had never failed him yet. David’s pleased approval had been worth it. “David is terrified of moths, butterflies, women in Birkenstocks and skirts, and Howard Hughes, not necessarily in that order,” Stevie says, and smooths his lapel. “I could kill you for breaking my door, if only because Jacob won’t replace it without a favor and I’d finally kicked him out of my poker tournaments.”

He winces. “I could do it.”

“No, you couldn’t,” she says, and puts out one of her cigarettes in the long, slim brass standing ashtray next to the armchair she’s leaning on, then the second. She blows a long stream of smoke out and opens her small beaded bag, searching inside a moment for her mirror. “Were David and his sister about ready?”

“On their way down now. Are you close with Alexis?”

Stevie snorts, something inelegant and condemning at once. “Alexis is close with Alexis, Patrick. The sooner you figure that out, the safer you’ll be.”

It’s a funny thing for Stevie to say, but he can’t ask her for clarification, because David and Alexis get off of the elevator in that moment. He watches as three dozen eyes turn to her, because how could they _not_ — Alexis looks like a movie star. She’s dressed to the nines, diamonds in her ears, slinky maroon gown falling down her curves like rainwater with a train three feet long and rustling around her heels the way rainwater sounds like when it puddles. She looks like the kind of woman who could destroy a man at fifty paces and make them like it. 

David is far more demure, in dinner jacket and the gray button-down with the unique pearl detail at the throat, the silver cufflinks, his wide-band rings. He looks like champagne and caviar, like dark chocolate and fig. Exotic and unique and _different_ , decadent on his tongue and exploding across his senses. 

He wants to reach across and brush his cheek across David’s, greet him hello. The French did it all the time, he thinks if he was brave enough he could have done it too. It was only fear that kept him from trying, that he wouldn’t be able to stop with one soft brush of his lips hello. 

It’s — nice. Going to dinner together, the four of them. For a moment he can forget about the war and the terrible realization he had this afternoon, the files sitting in his bag as if they didn’t have the power to unmake him. It feels like pretending, like he’s on assignment. Playing the role of affable boy next door, young and on holiday, escorting two beautiful women and one equally beautiful man in this, the most romantic city in the world. Patty would be shy, funny, sweet on the dames and bright-eyed with wonder at the circumstances he found himself. A version of Patrick that had died the night he first took a man’s life on the battlefield. A version of Patrick who doesn't know these same three people exist on a list of known suspects under possible investigation, in some of the most horrific things Patrick's ever heard, no small feat in the life of a soldier.

It had taken time for some of the angry flush to recede from David’s face, as they got ready. He didn’t quite seem to know what to say — embarrassed, Patrick had thought, though he had no reason to be. Even now, waiting to be seated, David avoids his eyes, enough that Patrick takes a step in close, pretending to read the plaque on the wall behind David’s shoulder. “Want to go back upstairs?” 

He watches the edge of David’s mouth curl from the corner of his eye. “Stevie’s handyman is fixing the door.”

“That’s not an answer,” Patrick says, touching a finger to the plaque as if deep in thought. It’s in French, and may as well be in hieroglyphics for what Patrick understands of it. 

The curl slips into a full-on grin, hidden behind a hand quickly swiped over his jaw. The sound his stubble makes against the skin of his palm is the same sound it had made last night, along Patrick’s thighs. “You don’t have to save me, Captain Brewer.” 

“It’s not always about being saved,” Patrick begins to say, but the maître d' returns with a flourish, clearly ready to impress the hotel’s proprietor, and cutting off everything Patrick needed to tell David in that moment.

They’re led into the dining room and Patrick had only ever seen it from the door, so he’s not quite prepared for the sheer opulence of the Avant-goût restaurant. He understands now why women came in their heels and gowns, why men came in tails. 

The luxurious red carpets underfoot, the immaculate art deco paintings an elaborate crown molding, and of course the massive, glittering chandelier in the middle of the dining room all serve to highlight what an expensive place this is, but somehow what drives it home for Patrick is how impeccably dressed the serving staff are. Flawless black tuxedos, shoes shined to a sparkle, trays lined with glittering gemstones in red and black to accent the opulent decor. 

David and Alexis are in front of them and headed up the small set of stairs to the upper dining room, him supplying the gentleman’s arm though Patrick can tell he doesn’t want to. Patrick offers Stevie his own arm, and she takes it, hand at the stairwell lined with enormous fern planters. 

“They dined here every night,” Stevie says. “During the Occupation.”

It takes him a moment before he understands what she’s saying. He hears the rage in her voice, a rage he understands with almost brutal intensity. “Did you have to serve them?” 

She jerks her head no. “My great aunt, Maureen, made me leave. David found me a place to stay in Dublin.”

Somehow, Patrick isn’t surprised. “When did you come back?”

“When Maureen stopped answering my telegrams,” Stevie says, letting go of his arm at the top of the stairs. She sways to a stop suddenly, and Patrick follows her gaze out across the upper dining room. The enormous wall of windows offers a breathtaking view of the Eiffel Tower, lit up with evening light and gorgeous against the darkening colors of the evening sky. “Chef Benoit wanted to set fire to this entire part of the hotel, and I almost let him. The only thing that stopped me is that this restaurant is the only thing keeping the _Gaston_ open.”

“I’m sorry, Stevie.”

“Why? You didn’t swan in and set up in my family’s hotel like it was your own personal pup tent.”

“Didn’t I, though?”

It makes her laugh, as he’d intended. He squeezes her fingers, gently, and tucks her hand back in the crook of his arm. 

The maître d' sits them at what is clearly the best table in the house, at the windows with the most stunning view of the Eiffel Tower and the glittering jewel of the Seine. He thinks, too, of what Stevie said, that Nazi leaders sat right here not so very long ago, eating their profiteroles and gazing at the swastika flag flying over Paris from the peak of the Eiffel Tower. 

It feels unreal, that he should be sitting here. That the bad people of this world had been pressed back, that good had prevailed in so many small ways. The blood of so many young men had paid for the freedom of these people, for the ladies to be in their gowns and the men in their tails. The thought makes Patrick pull on the hem of his coat, the edges of his sleeves, and he swallows down the metallic taste in his mouth. _We’re winning_ , he tells himself, the constant refrain he’d worn down over the years like a childhood lovey, no longer as warm or as solid as it had once been. They were winning, but at what cost, and to who, and not nearly fast enough.

These are the thoughts that run through Patrick’s head as he pulls out a seat for Stevie, sinks into a polished wooden chair next to David, who sits across from Alexis, men against the window to absorb the chill, and the public view, and the potentiality of a stray bullet that at one point wouldn’t have been as absurd a thought as it is to Patrick now.

“So, Alexis. How’s Spain?” Stevie reaches out and plucks a thick slice of bread out of the basket on the table, sliding a thick pat of butter across the top before ripping off a piece with her teeth and setting the rest daintily on the side of her plate. 

"I wouldn't know," Alexis says breezily, with a little shrug.

David blanches. "But you said–"

"God, you know I hate details, David."

“ _Details?!_ Details like what country you were in?!"

"This is like watching the Hindenburg," Stevie says, an unnatural amount of glee on her face.

“So where _did_ you go, Alexis?” Patrick slides a hand over and onto David’s knee, glad for the long hang of tablecloth and the dark side of the room they find themselves seated on. There’s an electricity rippling off of David that makes Patrick’s molars hurt, and he’s afraid they’re headed for a Rose Sibling Round Two he’s desperate to avoid.

“We _were_ headed to Majorca,” Alexis gently tears a small piece of bread from the piece in her hand, setting it into her mouth and chewing completely before speaking again. Patrick can’t be sure in the low lighting, but he thinks he sees Alexis shoot Stevie a look as she does it. “But then Stavros got this telegram from his father’s second in command, and he had to make some, I don’t know, _last minute diversion_ to Barcelona.” She flaps her hands over the table with a little shrug of her shoulders, like she’s repeating back a language she heard, but doesn’t speak, and Patrick can only imagine the sorts of things that would derail a man like Stavros, a man he’s never met and yet feels like he has, a dozen times over, in every corner of the world. 

“Oh, that explains it” David sips his wine and sucks his teeth a little and that edge is back, sharper than before, and there's so much disdain in his voice, even Patrick flinches. Patrick and Stevie exchange a look over the table, and Patrick’s fingers tighten on the edges of David’s kneecap. 

“I’ll have you know, David,” Alexis snaps her menu shut, “that I _chose_ to leave, okay. Adding a few extra weeks to visit his father’s shipping headquarters wasn’t in our original itinerary, and the last time I did that I ended up having to ride out a military junta with only _one_ traveler's trunk. I was not about to repeat that mistake, okay?”

“Okay,” David says with a little eye roll and an indulgent head nod, and Patrick thinks maybe they’ve landed at some sort of detente again when David says, “then, just explain to me why he left you with _no money_ and you had to call the Gaston to wire you the necessary funds?” One eyebrow crooks up, David’s gaze focused on the beds of his nails, his lips folded into an indulgent smile.

Alexis coughs a little on her sip of wine, her eyes darting to Stevie, who has enough sense to blush slightly before she becomes deeply engrossed in the seam on the cloth napkin in her lap. “I was...it was...God, David, why do you always have to be such a Nosy Nelly?”

David’s mouth rockets open, but the table is spared whatever biting retort he’d been ready to fire by the appearance of a very polished, supremely unflappable waiter, who takes each of their orders meticulously and only chuckles a little when Patrick manages to force some semblance of French out of his mouth. 

By the time he leaves, they’ve all taken enough collective breaths to let Patrick refocus the conversation, telling them about the time he and his cousins went exploring the old storm drains by their house, the flash summer flood that left them all drenched and smelling faintly of the brackish, grey standing water usually covering the bottom of the corrugated metal pipes. It feels like he’s outside his body, watching a man who only looks like him tell the story. Ricky groaning and whimpering all the way back to the homestead, Connor trying to get the muck off his trousers and wailing that Mum was going to string him by his smalls, and Patty himself nothing but a pair of eyes, mud caking him head to toe.

It’s perhaps not the most polite story, but it allows Stevie to tell a story about the first summer storm she remembers in Paris, and the smell of rain on the hot pavement, the first wave of blushing, whooping flappers taking off down the street in nothing but their garters and giggles. David latches on to that to tell the scandalizing tale of he and Stevie summering the coast, taking home an entire retinue of acrobats from a touring troupe, bodies bending into shapes worthy of legend. That last bit makes Patrick blush, which Alexis finds adorable enough to mention — _twice_ — before she reminds David about his past foray with a birthday clown, and before Patrick knows it, he’s caught up in a series of escalating stories about the Rose sibling’s decades of romantic-and-otherwise escapades. 

They’re sniping at each other still, but it seems softer in a way Patrick can’t quite name, every barb delivered with the backend hint of a smile, or a quick glance away instead of a steady stare-down. He laughs along with them and creates in his mind a bubble around this moment in his memory, suspended in time and the warm glow of candlelight. 

“Okay but _how_ did you meet this little button,” Alexis eventually says, her eyes focusing in on Patrick as David finishes swallowing and Stevie choke-laughs into her napkin. David shoots her a glare and then just as quickly looks at Patrick with soft, warm eyes that send heat pooling in the base of his spine. 

“Bar that would be bordering on sleazy if it was anywhere but Paris,” Patrick says on a half-smile. The lie comes sweet and pretty. “I’m here on R&R, before I get shipped out to Italy next week.” 

“You didn’t tell me that,” David says quietly, and there’s a note in his voice Patrick doesn’t want to think about, something he can’t let himself linger on or his throat will start to get tight with the knot he’s been swallowing down all day. 

“I was reassigned about a month ago. My commanders felt my talents were being wasted where I was.” 

“Somehow, that doesn’t sound like you’ll be in _less_ danger.”

“Not really,” Patrick says, and nudges the toe of his shoe against David’s. “It’ll be different, that’s all. But I know how to take care of myself.”

“How long have you been in the army?” Alexis asks, wide-eyed.

“Ten years next month. Good years and not so good years. I’m ready to leave it behind, to be honest.” 

David looks up sharply. He doesn’t quite seem capable of speaking, though, so Stevie does it for him. “You’re going to what, quit the army? Is that a thing they allow you to do?” 

If Patrick had the choice he’d leave it all behind right now, turn in his uniform and his guns and burn the files sitting in his bag upstairs, pretend that they were only something he saw in a nightmare once. “Resigning my commission. It’s up next year, and they’ve been pushing for me to sign the paperwork and re-up. I won’t be doing that. I’ve had enough.”

“What will you do?” David asks, without quite looking at him. “Without the army?” 

“I’m sure I’ll find a way to keep myself busy when I get out,” Patrick says softly. He doesn’t say, _I may not make it till next year._ He doesn’t say, _I’m going to destroy your life, because there is none of God’s mercy for men like me, so what does it even matter._

Patty Brewer wasn’t the kind of man to bring the mood of a party down, but Patrick can’t keep up the happy-go-lucky charm. There’s a numbness in his joints he recognizes, a numbness he thought he’d left behind when he met David earlier this week. It’s shutting him down like an ignition powered off. 

There’s a somber cloud hanging over the table now, and David is such a smart man. He squeezes Patrick’s knee gently under the table, as if he understands Patrick’s mood, as if he can fathom what is coming. Patrick smiles at him, just a little, and they finish their coffees and ice-creams in relative silence.

When they finish, Stevie makes her excuses about checking in with the carpenter fixing David’s door. She's been sullen since Patrick found her, cigarette in hand before dinner, and minus the occasional perk-up to annoy David or tease Alexis, she hasn't had much to say in the latter half of dinner. So much so that even David’s been casting her suspicious glances every so often. When she stands, she pushes her chair in so hard, the water in her glass splashes out and onto the tablecloth. 

“God, Stevie,” Alexis says, her eyes going wide. “What’s the matter with you?” 

“Nothing, just.” Stevie looks at her, eyes dark, and Patrick can practically taste the energy coming off of her, raw and hot and — angry? Her eyes flit back and forth between Alexis and David and she waves a hand through the air like she's clearing out smoke. 

She turns to leave, takes a half step away before turning back and practically hissing, "would it actually kill the Roses to look around and realize the world is bigger than their own little garden, that people are more invested in its growth than they might think." She snaps her jaw shut so tight Patrick hears her teeth click, and she takes several deep breaths before she speaks again, her voice level. “Patrick, David. I’ll make sure your door is fixed in the next half hour, just give me the lead time?” Patrick nods, and so does Stevie. She turns to go, deep green train spilling behind her, and at the last moment stops and says in a single rush of air. “The _Gaston_ is glad to have you back, Alexis.” 

And then she’s gone, and it’s such an oddly formal thing to say that Patrick vows to never get on the north side of Stevie’s cold shoulder. 

“Do I want to know what that was about,” David says, into the pocket of quiet left behind in Stevie’s tiny wake.

Alexis huffs, rolls her eyes, but she’s doing a poor job of not watching Stevie cross the enormous dining room. “How should I know, she's your friend.”

“Uh huh.” David turns his coffee cup, moving the handle to the other side, as he looks from Alexis to the slowly closing door to the lobby. “How are our parents?”

"Ugh David, how should I know? I haven't seen them in... six months,” Alexis says, and reaches across to take his coffee cup for herself. “Mom’s been hired for a new picture with Clark Gable, _Sunrise Bay_.” 

“I knew _that_ ,” David says quickly, perhaps more sharply than he intended. 

“Then why did you ask?”

David pointedly ignores her. “Did you see her for that thing at the Met? Wasn’t that only in February? 

“Who honestly knows anymore,” and she looks at the wall behind them, at the large statement clock slowly counting down the minutes. “Oh, wait! No, I skipped the Met event, but I did end up seeing her for _a_ day in Boston last month.” 

A flash of something on David’s face. There and gone again so fast, and looking like smothered pain. “And?”

“And what?”

“How was she?” David says each word slowly, and still Alexis only shrugs.

“She’s mom, David. She said something about her ‘unceasing lachrymosity’ at the ‘perturbing perpetuation’ of...oh, I don’t remember. She’s sad, David, that you never call her anymore.” 

“Me?!” David’s reaching a volume and a pitch that are slowly pulling in other sets of eyes, and Patrick coughs, gentle but loud enough for David to hear.

“Okay, she might have mentioned something about it being up to the both of us, but. I’m not the one who _lives in New York,_ if you’ll remember.”

“How could I ever forget that you’re basically homeless.”

“I am not homeless, I am on a spiritual journey of non-possessions, thank you.” 

“Ah, and the steamer trunks are full of...enlightenment, then?” 

Alexis’s eyes dart immediately to Patrick, who presses his lips together. He shouldn’t have said anything — he’s literally just met Alexis, and basically just met David, but. The way that David and Alexis speak reminds him of being with cousins, long nights spent at the ‘kids table’, and he’d wanted to be a part of that ebb and flow again. 

It doesn’t help that David is looking at him like he’s hung the moon, like he wants to lay him down on this beautiful wooden table and show the entire assembly of diners just how much he likes Patrick Brewer. Patrick gives him a small smile and Alexis makes a disgusted noise from across the table. "Ew, David." 

Patrick spins back to her, an earnest smile on his face, and he doesn't miss the way she fights a smile, bites the inside of her cheek in a way so reminiscent of her brother. She rolls her eyes and pulls her tiny handbag into her lap, plucking out the small mirror and checking the line of her lipstick. 

They make their way through the lobby, Alexis sandwiched between them, and Patrick feels again like he's moving some sort of bubble. Like the world outside this hotel, this stretch of lobby tile and the room to which it leads, are suspended outside time. He looks over at the two people walking beside him, her arm looped through his, at the way their eyes flash and they seem capable of opening a world full of locked doors. 

David crosses behind him to call the elevator, a single finger brushing across the back of his hand as he does, the corner of his mouth quirked up in a smile that sparks something dark and needy inside Patrick. Dangerous, how quickly he’s becoming accustomed to it, and how much he likes it. Dangerous, because in two days’ time Patrick is going to shatter their worlds. 

The elevator closes behind them with a low hum, and the pulley wires whirr into action above them. The elevator jerks gently as they start to go up and David’s hand presses against the small of his back to steady him, forcing liquid heat through all of Patrick’s bones. 

Alexis is pretending not to watch, thumbing the beads of her handbag in a gesture Patrick recognizes from David, the way he turns his rings at the base of his fingers. 

He likes her. Helplessly, he likes her. “Are you going to be alright tonight, Alexis? 

She flashes a big smile his way, utterly fake on her pretty face. “Yes, of course I will. I always am, when David is around.”

If Alexis had just informed them she was starting her own three-ring traveling circus, he doesn’t think David would be as surprised as he is at this moment. “You hate when I’m around.”

“You’re a grouchy bear and you ruin my fun,” Alexis agrees, flicking her gaze to him. He’s starting to realize what insults really mean in this little family of two.

The elevator grinds to a stop and Patrick holds the door for her to step off, the whisk of her dress’s train sweeping over his shoes. She strikes a pose once she’s off, chin on her shoulder and blond curls tumbling around her shoulders. She’s beautiful, of course she’s beautiful, but there’s something about the aqua of her eyes that invites people to smile with her, to laugh with her. 

It’s that smile she shoots his way, fluttering her lashes dramatically and holding up a hand, wrist bent and curved gracefully. David huffs with frustration and takes it, putting it in the crook of his arm like it’s personally offended him, and Patrick bites his lip so he won’t laugh. “Really?" 

“A lady doesn’t walk unaccompanied at night, David.”

“You’ve literally run naked on California beaches at the crack of dawn,” he snaps. 

“I have never been nude in public a day in my life,” Alexis demures, and winks outrageously at Patrick over David’s shoulder. “I belonged to the Hippocrates Cold Water Society for a spell. Did you know there are people who still believe in humor balancing?”

“Nothing about people surprises me,” he says. Alexis had been set up in the room directly next to theirs, because Stevie clearly hadn’t forgiven David some trespass only he was privy to. David grabs Alexis’s wrist between thumb and forefinger and takes it off his arm, and she rolls her eyes dramatically. 

“Honestly, David,” she huffs, and bops a finger against first his nose, then Patrick’s, before she swans into her room, snapping the door shut behind her.

Patrick didn’t think it would be possible to laugh very much tonight, but there’s just something so beautiful about David, the way he leans into every emotion, the way they can brighten his face, or turn it into a scowl. Everything he thinks is bright on that lovely, funny face, and right in this moment he looks so ruffled and pissed off, and there’s only so much he can do. “Sorry.” 

“You’re _not_ sorry,” David growls, as Patrick shakes with chuckles and he unlocks their door with a turn of the wrist. “She’s a nightmare and you _like_ her.” 

“I do,” he says, helplessly. “But I will say, I don't like this grumpy look she puts on your face, you look like an angry beaver."

"I'm afraid it's my face's natural default position when Alexis is involved. Also? Angry beaver? My God, your Canadian is coming out." 

It’s so easy, to laugh with David. “It’s all about the eyes.” 

He turns into him, he can’t not, feeling fearless and brave and like anything is possible, even in these awful circumstances he’s found himself in. The pain he’s going to feel, the pain he already feels, is only going to get worse. He’s afraid of it, of how he’s going to live afterward, but he could no more turn away from David than a flower could turn away from the sun. “Wonder if there's anything we can do to change that. Turn that frown upside down, as they say." 

David rolls his eyes and pushes open the hotel room door. "No one says that."

"I just said that." 

"And I'm begging you to never do so again." 

Patrick brushes past him, making sure to press his body into David's space as he passes through the thin door frame, unpainted and new. "Deal. Now. Let's see what we can do to get you making a few different faces, yeah?"

David nods, and grins, and pushes the door closed behind him with his foot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're half way there, friends! Thank you all so much for being with us on this journey, especially our amazing betas [TINN](https://archiveofourown.org/users/this_is_not_nothing/profile) and [helvetica](https://archiveofourown.org/users/helvetica_upstart/pseuds/helvetica_upstart), and our sensitivity reader [whetherwoman](https://archiveofourown.org/users/whetherwoman/pseuds/whetherwoman) who have been the biggest cheerleaders, best helpers, and sternist sense-talkers this pair of writers could ever ask for. Buckle in, y'all, because it's about to get fun!


	6. Chapter Six

Alexis’s voice wakes him up.

He doesn’t know why he thought the habits of a lifetime would change, honestly. His sister was a flighty, chirpy little doll who had terrible taste in men and no common sense, who lived her life fluttering from one adventure to another without a care in the world for the people who worried after her. Why else would she be nattering on her veranda, adjacent to David’s, knowing full well that the glass windows were paper thin? 

Patrick shifts in his sleep, nose at David’s jaw, and David forgets to be annoyed.

Yesterday had been an utter nightmare, and for a moment David truly thought that his sister had once again destroyed one of his relationships. The sting of having lost Ayn still burns like hellfire if he thinks on it, most of all because she’d been so gentle when she’d told him they could no longer see each other. “Man is a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, and reason as his only absolute,” she’d said to him in her beautiful Russian accent, mournful and so sad. “This is the heart of Objectivism, dear David. If this is how I am to live my life, how can I be with a man who does not care for his own happiness?”

He’d thought that Patrick would see right through him, just as Ayn had, the moment he laid eyes on David’s disaster of a sister. Instead he’d been personable, and so kind, when Alexis really hadn’t given him any reason to be. He’d joked with her, smiled at her, made her feel welcome (though God, she wasn’t), and hadn’t flinched once at her leading questions. 

And then last night. _God._ Eager and so sweet, shuddering as David nipped at the peaks of his tight nipples, crying out as David trailed kisses down his heaving ribcage, then silent as the grave when David had finally settled between his pale, soft thighs. Such a beautiful cock, compact like Patrick himself was, but thick, so thick. He’d brushed his cheek against that hard length and wished with all his heart to have it in him, to share his body with Patrick for just a little while. But it had been too late for David to take his time the way he wants to, and so he’d held back and decided: tomorrow. A tomorrow that was now today.

Even now, thinking of it is enough to make him shiver, and Patrick makes a noise against his throat, pressing a soft kiss there though he’s still mostly asleep. He runs his hand down Patrick’s back and hips, then over the heavy, muscled swell of his ass, turns his face just enough to brush his lips against Patrick’s temple.

Another time. Another place. They could have had this for as long as they wanted it. They could have seen where life would take them - maybe David would have been brave enough for that, safe in this feeling Patrick was building for them. But they didn’t have the luxury of time, the same that other couples got. All they had was today, one lovely and perfect day, left to them, and one more night.

Tonight. Tonight, he’d ask. If Patrick said no, it would be a wistful thing, a could-have-been. But if Patrick said yes, David would get himself ready, and spread his legs, and take Patrick into him right here in this bed, and try not to fall apart knowing they would only ever be given that single experience. That he’d have to live the rest of his life knowing what being cherished could feel like. 

Beside him, Patrick murmurs, “David.”

He shakes his head, chin trembling, and Patrick shifts up the bed, pressing kisses to his throat, his ear, his cheek. 

He slides his hand up David’s chest to his jaw, tapping gently until David has no choice but to look at him. The tears trail down his temple, and his chin trembles even worse. “Don’t cry. Please.”

The sun is coming up over Paris, but the curtains are drawn in their room. Birds are singing, and traffic has started to rumble down the street, but it’s quiet here, a respite against the world and all the dangers lurking just on the other side of their door. 

Patrick lays his head down on the pillow next to David’s, nose to nose, chin to chin, turned on their sides like crescent moons curved in perfect sync. Patrick holds his hand between them, on the pillow, and presses kisses to the knots of David’s knuckles. 

It takes time. Longer than they have, longer than it should. He wanted to wake up and be flirty, to laugh, to tickle Patrick a little bit and make him smile. “My turn now, I suppose. I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry too,” Patrick whispers, brushing his thumb gently under David’s eye. “It’s unfair.”

David laughs, choked and awful. “Life is unfair. I don’t want you to be lonely, Patrick. You’ve been so lonely.” 

His heart is breaking before David’s eyes. It’s awful to watch, _awful,_ and worse knowing he’s the one who did it, who made Patrick look so sad. “So have you, sweetheart.”

“I didn’t know it would be like this. I didn’t know we’d hurt each other like this.”

“Was it worth it?”

God. _God._ “Yes. Yes Patrick, it’s been worth every second.”

“For me too,” Patrick whispers, and leans over their laced fingers to kiss him.

Sweet. So sweet. Soft, and salty like tears, but Patrick’s mouth on his, Patrick’s tongue in his mouth, Patrick’s gentle touch, is the balm David needs in this moment. 

Later, when this is over, when he’s alone in this cold hotel room again and wondering where Patrick is, if Patrick is still alive, he knows he’ll think about these kisses, categorize them in his mind. This one will be near the top, if only because it’s the first kiss David’s ever been given where he knows, without question, that he is cared for. That he is loved. 

He can feel it in the ever-gentle press of Patrick’s lips to his, in the drag of Patrick’s palm across the stubble on his throat, raspy and soft in the quiet room. He can feel it in the weight of Patrick’s gaze on David’s face when he breaks the kiss, pulls back enough to run his eyes over the bridge of David’s nose, the line of his brow, the planes of his cheekbones as David tries to hold the joy of the moment without crushing it, to let the pain run through without pooling them both together. 

“We have this moment,” Patrick says quietly. “We’re going to make it beautiful, okay? Something perfect just for us.” 

David nods against Patrick’s fingers, eyes closed. “Okay.”

“What do you have planned?” 

“What do you mean?” 

“Oh, don’t tell me you David, of all people, haven’t made some sort of plan for our la — for today.” Patrick’s throat closes so tightly and so quickly David watches the word as it catches. Neither of them can call this day what it is, yet, can look at it straight on and say the word ‘last’. For David, it’s a word he’s not used to, and for Patrick it’s a word he’s come to know all too well. 

“It’s not a _plan,_ per say. It’s a... collection of ideas that I thought we could discuss and see if you’re amenable.” 

“Amenable?”

“Agreeable? Acquiescent?”

“Yes, yes, that Harvard vocabulary coming in handy.” David pinches his hip lightly, which makes Patrick laugh, bright and clear, and David catalogs that sound just below the kiss, the sound of sheer joy and contentment. He runs the backs of his fingers gently, gently along David’s jaw, affection bright on his face. “We don’t forget, David. We can’t. We just set aside the melancholy for now, and live in this moment. Okay?”

It’s as good a philosophy as any, and sounds as if it’s come from long experience. “Okay.” 

“Okay,” Patrick echoes with a hum. “So? What’s your plan, and will it involve food?" 

“Excuse me. My plans _always_ involve food.”

“I mean more than wine and cheese.”

David frowns sharply, lets Patrick run his thumb over his cheek to wipe away the trail of tears salty on David’s skin. “Cheese is food.”

“Cheese is cheese. I want steak.”

He shouldn’t be enjoying this so much. “It’s nine in the morning.” 

“Have you not heard of steak and eggs.” 

This delightful, delightful man. “Tell me more about this miracle breakfast food.” 

“Why tell, when I can show,” Patrick says, and leans in to kiss him with such gentleness that David’s entire body aches with it. “Come have decadent breakfast with me.” 

“Yes,” David says, and smiles. 

*

Now that the rain has passed, there’s a crispness to the Parisian morning air that promises a warm afternoon. There’s color everywhere David looks, from the creeping vines that had flowered overnight, to the bright reds and yellows of fluttering fabric overhangs announcing patisseries and boucheries. Cheerful bistros with pots of honeysuckle and peonies dot the avenue, and the rain has even cleaned the cobblestones, bringing the ancient walkways back to their illustrious beauty. It feels fresh, though maybe that’s just him, bright and clean and new too. 

It’s easier this time, to hang on to Patrick’s middle as he weaves his motorbike down narrow streets, guiding them around taxis and mopeds without laying off the gas once. He’s an expert at this, and David feels safe, despite squeaking when it seems Patrick is going to clip one of the city buses, when he takes a corner too fast and they feel weightless for a fraction of a second. 

He’s sure Patrick is doing it just to get him to squeeze tight around his middle. He doesn’t mind.

They pass the Musée Jacquemart-André where David had spent most of his seventeenth summer on this earth among the 16th century art. The Parc Monceau is ripe with chic French mothers with their prams and elderly couples walking on this fresh weekday morning, but as they leave the park in their rearview mirror, the buildings begin to subtly change. 

The war’s footprint is felt in Batignolles much more than the Champs-Élysées, and there are sections of road still broken and unpaved, buildings damaged. Stevie had told him that when the 18th arrondissement was bombed as the Germans were retreating it affected a wider swath of the city, but being told and seeing it are two different things, David realizes. 

It’s clear that those who lived in the 17th arrondissement had been doing their best to continue on, and that strength and will to return to normal life is marked by a riot of flowers everywhere he looks, outdoor cafes and tens of dozens of shops selling everything from shoes to wedding gowns. It’s quiet, for a Thursday morning, though there are still couples walking in the fresh morning air, mothers headed to the market with their shopping trolleys rolling after them, construction workers at their trade behind cordoned off street corners. 

They come to a stop in front of a tiny, charming post office, and David is much more graceful getting off the bike than he had been the other day. The helmet crushed his hair a bit, but he’d been prepared today, and he ruffles it with his fingers, working the extra pomade he’d left at his roots through the rest of it. It gives him a little bit of a softer look, he’d realized this morning, and he likes how that makes him feel. He likes being softer, with Patrick.

Patrick takes the helmet from him, tying both into his saddle bags, and if this had been a different time and different place David thinks Patrick would have taken his hand. As it is, he smiles, soft and personal. “Our breakfast awaits. Best food you’ve ever eaten in your life.”

“I’ve eaten a lot of great food,” David says, suspect, but as they start in that direction, he can’t help but marvel at how lovely this little corner of Paris is. He’s driven past it many times, but never stopped to peek into the bookstores, the little pastry shops. There’s a rustic charm about this little place, from the big oak trees lining the sidewalks to the cheerful little banners hanging from slightly singed storefronts, covering up the worst of the damage with sheer human resolve. 

It’s beautiful. He loves it here, and that Patrick brought him makes it all the better. 

The stop at five or six shops along their walk, less because Patrick moves them along, more because David gets distracted from food by this little trinket or that one. He buys Winston Graham’s new book, _Poldark: A Novel of Cornwall,_ though he wonders if it’ll be a mystery like the others he’s read by Graham. He pokes around a sweets shop and buys more chocolate than he should. 

When they make it to the end of the avenue and turn the corner, he exclaims, “Look, Patrick! A junk shop!” 

It’s a _fantastic_ junk shop too, filled to brimming with all sorts of amazing finds, and David has come to understand the appeal. Patrick is behind him, gazing at the shelves, but he’s oddly quiet — he smiles at all the right times, laughs at all the right times, but David can tell his mind is a thousand miles away. 

“Hey,” he says quietly, setting the old serving bowl back down on the shelf with all the other junk items. “I’m sorry. Let’s go have breakfast.” 

Patrick tries to smile, because he’s a good and decent man. “You like shops like this. You like shops, period.”

“I _love_ shops,” David says, humming and holding the door open for him. Batignolles is a dream, birds chirping and school children scurrying after their lady-teacher in their red bonnets and blue short-pants. “I love how you walk into a thousand little possibilities as soon as you cross the threshold.” 

“You do?” He’s got a sparkle in his eye that means he’s teasing, and it sends a small bead of warmth dripping down the dips in David’s spine. He shrugs a shoulder and waves his hands through the air in a way that means _‘of course’._

“Think of it this way: you walk into one of these little marchés to decide what to have for dinner —” 

“Food again?” 

“What instead? Shoes? Bath products? Fine. You wander into _la droguerie_ and see a pile of soaps, hand poured and cut. Is that the kind of person you are? Or do you prefer something liquid, something that will foam and bubble, but won’t necessarily swipe at the grit under your nails.” He glances sideways quickly, his eyes flitting down to Patrick’s hands, and he smiles softly. Patrick sees, because of course he does, and immediately shoves his hands in his pockets and knocks his shoulder against David’s. 

“You were saying something about soap?" 

“So you are a bar soap man? Okay, then. Cow’s milk, or goats? Do you prefer something cold pressed, something oil infused — and what about scent? Something clean? Floral? And what do both of those say about the person you want to be in this world, both when you can be seen and when you can’t.”

“That sounds exhausting.”

“I suppose it can be, although overwhelming might be a better word. Because then you get to do it again with the shampoo, and a shave kit, and then you leave there and it’s clothes, or dinner, or the evening’s activities, all needing to be bought and sold. And it’s different for every person, the choices they see and the impact they have. Some might not care a wit for the product they run through their hair, but would die for the right salt in their butter. Or the right cut of suit, the perfect shade of leather to make a picture of yourself you’ve had in your mind pop to life in this world, concrete and solid. 

They wander farther, along the sidewalk, and Patrick rubs his hand along his jaw, his eyes flitting to David’s face, and David tries to school the radiant smile he wants to give Patrick into something more appropriate for an early morning weekday walk to breakfast. “You talk about shops the way you talk about art.”

“Well. They’re a lot alike, I suppose.” And he’s never necessarily thought about it before, not in that context, but the more he lets the thought bounce around his brain, the more he can see the similarities. “Maybe in another world, that’s what I would have done instead. Started a business, instead of a gallery.”

“Why another world? Why not this one?”

David shrugs and pulls the lapels of his day jacket together, his hands slipping into the folds of his elbows. He’s feeling exposed all of a sudden, cold like he is on winter days when he doesn’t fully let his hair dry before going outside, and despite the warm sunshine and the way Patrick’s looking at him, he suddenly feels a tremor of _too much_ run under his skin. “You say that so easily.”

“I mean. I of all people understand the feeling of being dedicated to a life path.” He quirks an eyebrow at David and David blushes and nods. “But it’s been shown to me, of late, that things aren’t nearly as set in concrete as we might want to think they are.”

“And why would we _want_ to think that?” 

Patrick breathes heavily through his nose and David isn’t sure how they got here, why they keep circling back to this sad place, despite how fervently they both seem to want to leave it behind them. 

When Patrick casts another glance his way, David sees the sheen of unshed tears, the hint of pink creeping in around the edges of Patrick’s eyes, which from day one had always said more than his mouth had ever managed. “Because it’s easier, David. To think that the pieces move, instead of us moving them. Even when the moves are bad, and you’re up between a wall and, well. Another bigger, scarier wall. If we don’t feel like we ever had a choice, then we at least don’t have to feel guilty about making the wrong one.”

David’s stomach swoops, and he’s struck with the disconcerting feeling they’re not having the same conversation, or that Patrick’s having two conversations at once, but only one of them with David. Before David can ask him what he means, though, the worried set of his eyes is gone and he’s smiling at David. 

It doesn't look forced, but David's had days to memorize the tilt of Patrick's mouth in moments of true joy, to study the dimples that wink into existence when he laughs, the faint laugh lines around his eyes that crinkle into being only when he's truly happy. None of those things are there now, David opens his mouth to say something reassuring when the smell of coffee and fried bacon works its way through the fog and into David’s senses and his stomach speaks before he has the chance to. Patrick pulls open the little glass door and ushers David inside with a quiet, “Let’s eat.” 

* 

David should have known that when Patrick said he wanted a decadent breakfast, he would mean that by the same delightfully rustic standards he’d meant everything else in their relationship so far. David doesn’t know how he’d done it, but Patrick had managed to find the one Parisian cafe with a specialty of Canadian farm breakfast, and David leans back in the thin-legged wooden chair and feels like the weight of the breakfast in his stomach is just enough to pull him off kilter. “Oh my _God,_ Patrick.”

“I know, I know,” Patrick says, laughing, sweeping his pancake through the last of the homemade syrup before popping it in his mouth.

There’s something about eating outside that makes the food taste even better than it already is, and the food is truly spectacular. The little bistro, _L'Entrecôte,_ is everything French bistros are supposed to be — tidy but a bit shabby, with red awnings and old glass windows that had shadowed from too many winters and stove fireplaces. The wood and cast-iron tables dotted the inside of the bistro as well as the outside, and they’d tucked themselves into a little corner outside that allowed them to people watch from relative privacy. 

David’s never had breakfast so good, as if he’d been transported to some tiny little homestead where the same family had been making steak-and-eggs breakfasts for so many generations that it had become an art form. The pancakes had been fluffy and so soft they’d nearly melted in his mouth, the sunny side up eggs perfectly crispy, and _the steak._ Patrick grins, taking a long drink of his coffee which, the perky waitress had refilled for him twice. “Good?”

“Perfect,” David says, sighing. “I’m never moving from here again. I’m kidnapping the chef and stowing them away with me back to New York.”

Patrick smiles, nudging David’s own coffee cup closer to him. “You’re such a food snob, I knew you’d like this place.”

David has never been so insulted in his entire life. “Excuse me.”

“Snob. Food snob. You’re snobby about food.”

“I am _not._ ”

“David. The first night we met, you took me to a bar that served caviar and oysters as finger food and we drank an entire bottle of red wine that probably cost what I make in a month.”

He glowers even as he colors. Not a good look. “I like fine things.”

“You do,” Patrick answers, smirking, and oh my God. 

“How could I have ever thought you were a good, sweet Canadian boy?” David demands, and Patrick bursts out laughing. 

The waitress comes to take their empty plates and refill their coffee cups. When they’re alone again Patrick leans his chin on one hand and taps the center of the table with the other. The breeze keeps ruffling the short curl of his hair, and it’s extremely distracting. “Where would it be?”

“Hmm? Where would what be?”

“Your shop.”

“Ahh, my shop,” David says, allowing himself to slip back into the game. “I’d want it on a street corner just like this. Tucked away from a main thoroughfare, a flower shop on one side, a coffee shop on the other.”

“That’s romantic.”

“I’m allowed romance for my made-up shop,” David decides. “It would be red brick with black facade, and have enormous windows in the front so I could do window displays for the seasons. The flower shop owner would sell to me at cost, so there’d always be roses, gypsophila, lavender. When people walk in, I want them to think it smells like an English garden.”

Patrick is watching him, so warm. “What would you sell?” 

“Well, this kind of shop wouldn’t work in a big city. At that point I’d be so thoroughly sick of my family and all of their trappings that I’d have given up the lot and escaped New York in the cloak of darkness.” 

“Mysterious,” Patrick says on a hum. 

“In my panicked flight, because all good heroines go on panicked flights in the books, I’d end up in some small rural town somewhere. Somewhere with a creek, and farmland for miles, and a quaint downtown area that would be the social hub of the town.” 

“Don’t tell me, David. You’d sell moonshine.” 

“I _would_ sell moonshine,” David says, just to get Patrick to laugh again. “I’d support local artisans by selling their products under the brand of the store, which would also be my brand. I’d structure it like a consignment, probably at something like thirty percent, like I do at my galleries now. They’d have a place to sell their products, I’d create brand recognition.” 

David loves how surprised Patrick looks. Sometimes it’s nice, when he gets to prove that he’s more than just a pretty face. More than his family’s money.

“That’s a good idea, David. Rebranding local products and crafts...it’s very inventive.” 

“I know.” 

“What would you call it?” 

“Rose Apothecary,” David says, without missing a beat, and freezes. He hadn’t even had to think about it. He’d suffered through six weeks and a staggering one hundred eleven names before settling on Thorn and Thistle Galleries, and to this day hated it just a little bit because it had been Sebastien who'd ultimately chosen the name. 

“I like it,” Patrick says, smiling. “Just pretentious enough.” 

David narrows his eyes so he won’t laugh. “Would we call that pretentious? Or timeless?” 

“The truth is only going to hurt your feelings,” Patrick says, and laughs when David flicks his napkin at him. He catches it, smooths it on the table. “I’m serious. It’s a good idea. Why not do it?”

But David is already shaking his head. “Because it’s a dream, Patrick. I know nothing about running a business. A _real_ business. Plus I’m a city mouse, what do I know about the _countryside._ ” He says it like it’s the moon.

“You run three galleries in New York.”

“My galleries run my galleries, and Eli picks up the rest,” David says, shaking his head. Grief is a shard in his chest, sharp like a knife, and he can’t look at Patrick even as the words catch behind his teeth. And because he’s not looking, he misses the way Patrick’s eyes narrow slightly, the way he leans forward a fraction of an inch. 

He’s never said them to anyone out loud. Not even Stevie. But somehow, they come easy here with Patrick. 

“Last year. The last time I was in the same room as my mother. She’d just finished shooting _Jazzagals,_ the picture with Ronnie Lee.”

“I know it,” Patrick says quietly, an odd note in his voice. 

David nods, staring down at his coffee. “I shouldn’t have gone to see her. My fault. I know how she gets at the end of a picture — she’s manic, obsessed with checking the papers for even a morsel of news about the reception of the picture. She hasn’t been doing Talkies long, you know? I should have known better. I’d just gone through a bad breakup, the worst of my life. I just…” and he laughs, a little at himself, and blinks rapidly. “I just wanted her to be a mother for once. Stupid. She’s not — what was I honestly expecting?”

Patrick is quiet, so quiet, and David can’t look at him. He can’t. 

“I was in a bad place. I told her I wanted out, that I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to leave. That… that I’d go to California, start a gallery there. And she told me that I couldn’t. When I asked her why not, she told me that she and my father have been purchasing my patrons for the past eight years. All the money I’ve made, the connections I’ve built, were done on the shoulders of my parents, the puppet masters, pulling the strings behind the curtain.” 

A sharp, sucked-in breath from across the table. David looks up and Patrick looks _gutted._

“Not only did she and my father not think I could do it — they never even let me try.”

“That… that’s no reason not to walk away, David.”

“Of course it is. I'm such a failure that my parents— “

But Patrick isn’t listening. He stands and comes around the table, dragging the chair with him so they’re close, knee to knee, face to face. He takes David’s coffee from him and sets it on the table, then takes his hands right there, in front of Paris and the world, and squeezes them tightly. “David. You’re the smartest man I’ve ever met. You’re strong, and capable, and so fiercely intelligent. You know what you want and you take it in hand. Literally,” he says, squeezing his hands again. “Please, don’t take this the wrong way, but every time you talk about the galleries you fade, like a flashlight with dying batteries. You hate them.”

He does. Oh, God. He’s hated the galleries for a long time, though the final nail in the coffin had been that conversation. His mother, gazing at him over the top of her newspaper, with her red lipstick and her coiffed blond hair and her disappointment in him, that he should be so upset at finding out that his parents didn’t believe in him. 

He loves his mother, and he always will. But he hadn’t sought her out since, and he’s not sure she’s noticed. Maybe it was better, this way. 

“The galleries feel like an albatross around my neck,” David croaks, clenching his eyes shut. “And Eli, he’s been sniffing around for _months_ now at my father’s behest, trying to catch me at a mistake, going over my paperwork with a fine-toothed comb. I can’t stand it.”

Patrick’s hands tighten on his. “Trust me when I say this, David. Life is too short not to do the things you love. Rose Apothecary doesn’t have to just be a dream. It can be a shop, _your_ shop, in whatever town you want it to be in.”

“You really think I could do it?”

“I’m pretty sure you could build me a new motorbike by hand with nothing but a screwdriver set and Alexis’s luggage, so I might be the wrong person to ask. 

David laughs out loud. “And Ted’s birdcage?”

“You’d melt the metal down with your shaving bowl and your letter opener to make your own bolts,” Patrick agrees, and smiles. “David. The idea is good — it’s _smart._ I think you could make it a success. It’d be something you’d enjoy, a place for you that you built with your hard work and determination.” 

“That’s not the way life works,” David says, so softly. “Things are never that simple. Rose Apothecary — it’s a dream, Patrick.”

“It doesn't have to be. Make me a promise, David. When you get back to New York, you’ll stop investing your time and energy into what your parents think you should have, and start thinking about what you want. _You._ The person who has to live every day in your shoes. Not your father, and not Eli.” There’s a fierceness to the way he says it, the way his fingers press a little harder into David’s, and he feels something like a chill trickle down his spine. 

David stares at him, at the heart of conviction right there in Patrick’s eyes. “How do you do that?” 

“What?”

“You make it all sound so easy.”

“You see things differently once you’ve experienced the things I’ve experienced. So much death. So much grief. And for what, David? For what, when there’s so much opportunity for happiness?”

 _You’re cold,_ Sebastien had told him once, not so long ago. _Like ice. Like a frigid morning in January. Love, David? Your love would be a block of ice lashed around my ankles._

He doesn’t think his love would be a block of ice lashed around Patrick’s ankles. In another time, and another place, he thinks it would be the foundation they’d both stand on. 

“A tiny Russian writer told me the same thing once,” David says and kisses Patrick right there in their little private corner of the _L'Entrecôte._ It’s a sweet and soft and fleeting little thing, and Patrick’s expression, his _warmth,_ is worth it.

“And did you listen then?”

“I think I thought I did.” 

Patrick looks at him with an eyebrow raised, and finally sits back, letting go of David’s hand just long enough to take a sip of his coffee before his hand returns, this time to David’s knee. “At the time I thought I was happy. Or was as happy as I was going to be.” 

“And now?” 

“And now...and now you’re here, there, across from me, looking like that,” David waves his hand through the air, “and I’m not sure I know if the happiness I knew then was actual happiness, or just a shell of a thing I’d always heard other people talk about. A feeling I confused with _winning,_ in a game I didn’t even remember starting.” 

Patrick smiles and runs his thumb just under his lip and drains the rest of David’s coffee, ignoring the affronted sound that bursts out of David’s mouth. David’s not really offended, although he still feels like he could use half a dozen demitasse cups, but he knows that Patrick expects him to make the noise, will smile if he makes the noise, and so David makes the noise. “Well, David. I seem to remember you saying something about us not having to play by anyone else’s rules anymore. What was it? ‘Everything you think you know doesn’t apply, not here and not now’?” 

David blushes, and shrugs, his own words wrapping around to snap at him in Patrick’s gentle voice. Because the truth is that they’re running out of here, and running out of now, and if Patrick is going to throw out the rules of a game David started, he’s not sure whose move comes next, or what winning is going to look like. “That’s not fair, Captain.”

“What isn’t?” 

“Using my own words against me.” David’s voice breaks, and he coughs to smooth the crack, but Patrick catches it, like he catches all the things David most wishes he would miss.

“Oh, I don’t know. It’s good advice. Does it matter who gives it, and who takes it?” 

Patrick’s eyes are sparkling and David feels the world spin to rights underneath his feet. They’re back on the steady, teasing ground David knows so well, and he rolls his eyes and clicks his tongue. “Well. Lucky for you I’ve always been a very _generous_ person, so.” He stands and plucks his billfold out of the inside pocket of his jacket, but Patrick catches his hand and takes out his own. He folds several bills and tucks them under the edge of a plate. “Shall we?” 

“Where to now?” 

“With full stomachs and a day ahead? Where else — back to bed.” 

He takes off in the direction of Patrick’s bike, leaving Patrick gaping after him for a few seconds before he laughs and jogs the few steps to catch up.

* 

They don’t make it five steps into the lobby before Alexis is _shrieking_ David’s name so loudly it reverberates off the stone in the Gaston lobby. She practically runs up to him, the fluttery hem of her black and yellow polka-dot day dress dancing around her knees, two lily-white gloves clutched in one hand and a hat three seasons out of date and yet still somehow wildly fashionable stuck on her head. If she weren’t David’s sister, and he weren’t so determined to be constantly annoyed by her presence on this planet, he’d probably ask her how she managed to do that. 

“Oh my God, David!”

“Yes, hi, hello Alexis. We heard you. Everybody heard you.” He gestures around him to a lobby that he now realizes, a second too late, is empty of everyone save for them. 

“What ‘everybody’, David, there are four of us here.” She looks back over her shoulder and David sees Stevie at the desk, flipping idly through the check-in registrar and trying and failing to look like she’s not listening to every word she can between the three of them. 

“You may as well join us,” David calls to her, and Stevie looks up with what’s actually a surprisingly decent surprised face. 

“Me?”

“No, I was actually talking to Jacob? And any of the other hotel staff who are around who _aren’t_ you.”

“Aw, good morning to you too, David,” Stevie says as she makes her way across the lobby to them. The Schiaparelli pantsuit he’d bought her last year flows down her petite body in reams of gray and white fabric, belted at the waist and much more masculine than current fashion dictated acceptable or appropriate. David had never seen her in it, had been half-afraid she hated it, but God, he’d been right. She looks like a tiny powerhouse in it, like a hotelier capable of taking over the world. She looks _sensational._

He’s smiling before she even makes it over to them, and she gives him The Eye, a Stephanie Budd look that clearly says, ‘what’re you smiling at bozo’ and ‘you’re embarrassing’. “Okay, stop.”

“I was right, it’s gorgeous.”

“You weren’t, I just had nothing else clean,” she replies with a huff, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.

Alexis has gone quiet, and when David looks at her he catches something he’s never seen before on her face, something foreign he can’t describe or place. She’s staring — also a thing Alexis has never done — and if David were a betting man he’d say his sister was speechless. It takes her a minute to blink, to look back at him. “What?”

“I have no idea,” he says, fully exasperated with his sister. He and Patrick are _headed upstairs._ To do the sorts of things that are best suited for behind closed doors. He can feel Patrick’s body heat, can sense his presence right behind his shoulder. “What’s wrong with you? Have your hot curlers been wound too tight?”

“Lick rust.” Alexis sneers at him. “I was _trying_ to tell you I got four tickets for the grand opening of _Le Lido,_ but if you’re not interested—”

Stevie’s arm snaps out and grabs him by the elbow. “Oh my God.”

“You what,” David says, faint.

But Alexis is too busy looking smug, half-turned away and smirking over her shoulder flirtatiously the way she’s been doing since before she could talk, and which somehow had always worked on their dad in getting her way. 

“ _How,_ ” David breathes, and almost sways on the spot. He drags Stevie and Patrick over to the sofas in the entrance hall and half-collapses onto one. “There’s a year-and-a-half waiting list.”

“What’s Lalido?” Patrick asks, bemused.

“ _Le Lido._ Only the hottest French cabaret since _Moulin Rouge_ opened its doors,” Alexis says, smiling like a cat who got the canary. “They aren’t even officially open, not until next year, but they’ve been doing study shows since January.”

Patrick rubs a hand over his mouth, and David can see him trying to hide a smile. “French cabaret?” 

“Not just French cabaret,” David breathes, shaking his head and hoping he can make Patrick understand. “The Clérico brothers had a bar, like the one I took you to the first night, a jazz bar under a townhouse. It got so popular that the police raided it no fewer than forty times. I saw Josephine Baker sing there one of the last nights they were open.”

“Everyone in the know thought for sure that they'd finally pissed the law off one too many times, and then suddenly two years ago — _Le Lido,_ ” Stevie says, fingers bruising on David’s arm.

“It’s been very hush-hush ever since, and last year they began doing study-shows. They put the show on, the costumes, the music, the whole bit, and then ask for audience feedback to make improvements. Trying to get tickets for a study-show… let’s just say Ahab would have better luck catching his big white whale.” David glares suspiciously up at his sister. “How.”

Alexis beams, wrinkling her nose. “A lady never tells her secrets.”

“Then what’s stopping you?” Stevie slaps him on the arm, and David winces. He mumbles something that’s not quite sorry, and when Alexis gives him a little nod of forgiveness, he tries again. “Was it Joseph, or Louis? I told you to stop baiting them.”

“Ew, David! As if I’d give Louis the time of day, after what he said to me in Malaga,” Alexis says, and there it is again, that funny look on her face, the one he can’t place or even name. She’s avoiding Stevie’s sharp gaze. “Joseph is a very sweet and lovely man, and he gave us a table at the front as his honored guests.” 

David sucks in a sharp breath. “Oh God.” 

“I know.” 

“No! I mean, yes, for once one of your boyfriends has finally come through. But Patrick doesn’t have clothes.” 

“I have clothes.” 

“No, you don’t,” David says, and turns to Stevie. He doesn’t even know if Auel will see him, not after the last conversation they had, shouted words and an anger born of stubborn fear. Of knowing Auel was right. “How quickly can Monsieur Antonio see us?” 

“I’ll call him right now, but you know he’d drop anything for you,” Stevie says, and squeezes his arm. “Peak lapel?”

David gives her a look. “Of course a peak lapel. And a Windsor base, with besom pockets and satin trim.”

Stevie smiles and spins on her heel towards the front counter and the phone. Alexis looks after her a moment before trotting behind her on her too-high, wobbly white pumps. 

“Want to tell me what’s going on?” 

Patrick. So handsome and so amused, hands in his pockets and eyes bright with mirth. 

David beams at him. “ _Cabaret,_ ” he says, and Patrick starts to laugh. “What?”

“It’s just that my men told me I’d better see some naked French ladies on my R&R, but I’d been pretty sure that wasn’t going to happen.” 

David grins outright, and has the impossible urge to cradle that perfect face and plant one on him right here in the middle of the foyer. “It’s happening now, Patrick. Naked French ladies as far as the eye can see. Don’t ever say I never gave you anything.” 

“He’s waiting for you!” Stevie calls, from across the lobby, and flashes two big thumbs up. “Have fun!”

“Do I get any say in this?” Patrick asks, though he isn’t fighting at all when David spins him around by the shoulders and pushes him back to the hotel doors. 

“Nope!” 

“Okay then,” Patrick says, as he’s herded back outside. 

*

David has been coming to Auel Antonio since long before he felt confident enough to express himself. He can remember coming to this shop in short-pants, hardly taller than his father’s knee, and watching, rapt, as Auel styled his father. Bespoke suits, tuxedos and dinner jackets. For a period of time Auel had styled Johnny Rose from head to toe like he was the royal warrant, outfitting him to the most intimate detail.

As David had gotten older, and had dealt with terrible tailors who _thought_ they knew what they were doing but clearly didn’t, he’d gravitated towards Auel time and time again. Over time they’d become friends, despite the twenty-two-year age gap, and that relationship had deepened for a time, right around when David discovered the beauty and freedom and relief of his own queerness. They had ended amicably, and their friendship had only grown on the shoulders of the intimacy they had shared. 

Auel hadn’t blinked when David came to him and asked for slender suits, for vests in outrageous prints and materials, for trousers without pleats. In time, the trust between them had deepened to such that David didn’t even ask for what he wanted anymore — he just knew Auel would be able to make him the exact garment he needed for the exact event. 

He’d dressed David in silks and brocades, lace and velvet. He’d made him his first skirt. And his second. And his third. 

He would do that for Patrick, David knows. He’d look right into the heart of him, at his tentative, unsure and brave steps in his own queer journey, and dress him the way he needed to be dressed tonight. 

Auel’s shop is at the corner of Boulevard Saint Germain, and how he’s been able to keep up with the rental prices David will never know. Every time he’s come to Auel’s shop he’s been the only one there, and to this day he has no idea how that is. He’d been so curious about it he’d asked him, once, but Auel had just smiled that mysterious smile of his and hadn’t answered. David knew not to ask again, and given the current circumstances, he’s grateful that Auel has stayed true to that particular quirk.

Auel hasn’t changed a whit, for all that David hasn’t seen him in several years. He and David are practically the same height, their dark hair swept up and back away from their faces in a similar fashion, although Auel’s is peppered with silver at the temples. His eyes are serious, cutting, taking Patrick in from head to toe with a single flick of the eye, and David remembers that, too. Being studied, examined, taken apart. 

Auel’s taken on a new shop assistant, notable for how young they are, 16 if a day. If Auel notices him looking he doesn’t comment on it, though David supposes that he’s surprised his old friend in turn. He and Auel hadn’t spoken for some time, not since he tried to speak sense to David, that Sebastien was hurting him, abusing his trust and his kindness. 

He’d been right. He was always right. David sees it now, with Patrick. What was missing from his relationship with Sebastien. What was missing from Sebastien himself.

“I should probably mention again that it’s been ten years since I was fitted for a suit,” Patrick says from where he’s standing on the tailoring platform before the enormous, beveled mirrors anchoring the tailoring room corner to corner. He’s in David’s shorts, an undershirt, and his boots, and David should probably not like it as much as he does, for all that he’s studying the compact, muscled form before him with a different eye than normal. 

Auel frowns sharply. “You’ve not been fitted for a suit in _ten years?_ ”

“I’m in the Army?”

“Do you not wear things outside of being ‘in the Army’?”

“Sure. Just not anything I’d need a suit for.”

Auel looks at David, shocked, and David’s lips roll inward so he won’t laugh. He knows why Auel is so surprised — sometimes it would take Sebastien so long to get ready they’d miss their reservations. He never wore the same thing twice, insisting that once worn the clothing took on the miasma of what they’d just endured and it corrupted his creative process. 

“Really, David?” 

“Yes,” he says, and sees in Auel’s eyes a joy for him he hadn’t hoped to expect, the words they’d spoken to each other last still burning in his ears. 

Auel makes a noise in his throat and the new shop assistant, Ari, jumps to his side. “Well, Mr. Army Man, every gentleman needs a good suit. You will be leaving my store today with a tuxedo you need for tonight, and a suit, which you need for life.”

Patrick cringes, says, “It’s just going to end up in a rucksack,” and Auel says some choice words in French before yanking the tape measure from his neck with a snick. 

“We will begin.” 

“I haven’t told you what I want yet?” 

David smiles. “That’s not the kind of place this is,” he says gently, coming around to the other side of the platform where Ari is taking Auel’s barked direction on their notepad. “Do you trust me?”

“You? Yes.” 

Auel scoffs from Patrick’s knee, the sound of the tape measure whisking through his hands sharp in the quiet of the shop. “You are new,” he says, then, like it’s obvious. Which it is. “Who do you think outfitted your paramour in such snappy fashion?” 

Patrick blushes on the word paramour, and so does David, but neither of them say anything. They don’t need to, and it quite honestly wouldn’t matter if they did. Auel is wrapping the measuring tape around various points of Patrick’s body that seem to make relatively little sense to him — the dip of his bicep, the width just under his ribcage, the length of his inseam but then also the circumference of his ankle and even the distance from his fingertips to the ground, but David watches Auel’s fingers dance and know he’s weaving a spell magic of his own, a filigree of centimeters and half-cuffed French linen that will make a fashion plate out of Patrick Brewer. 

When Auel steps back and mutters something sharp and staccato to Ari in French, and David hears a name he doesn’t recognize, his ears perking. Ari hurries off to the back, lost amidst a sea of crisp, dark suit jackets and the increasingly popular baggy, wide-lapeled numbers that make David itch under the skin. 

“So, where are you two headed this evening?”

“Lalido?” Patrick says it offhandedly, like it’s all one word, and David notices that Patrick can’t help but twist his body slightly, his gaze drawn to each of the three mirrors, and a warm, familiar sensation settles in David’s stomach. It’s a heady thing, seeing yourself from new angles, in new ways, even though nothing’s changed except the small voice in your head that says, _‘maybe this, yes, could be it?’_ David’s stood where Patrick stands, and felt the feeling Patrick feels, and a new thread snaps in place between them. 

Auel gasps slightly and his eyes immediately flit to David’s face, who nods, unable to eat the gloating smile off his face.

“Mon Dieu, _Le Lido,_ ” Auel says, and crosses himself, although David knows full well that he hasn’t stepped foot inside a Cathedral in longer than it’s been since Patrick’s last suit fitting. “Well, in that case. This is doubly perfect.”

And he holds out his hand at the exact moment Ari appears to place the hooked end of a hanger across his fingers, the black garment bag thick and heavy. David gulps and tries to school his face into a modicum of normal excitement. But, he knows Auel, and knows that only the best garments go in the heavy bags, and when Auel pulls the zipper, David can’t suppress the small gasp that escapes his mouth. 

The jacket is completely unlike anything David’s ever seen before, and David has been coming to Auel for many, many years. He doesn’t know what he was expecting for Patrick — maybe something in a crushed velvet, a dark blue to bring out the dark brown of his eyes, the red tints in his hair. He wasn’t expecting anything like this. 

He has no idea what the material is, though he suspects viscose and silk, perhaps a touch of satin. The jacket’s structure is dreadfully out of current fashion, a slender cut with fitted shoulders, a tapered waist. It has a peak lapel because Patrick’s bone structure calls for peak lapels, and a single-button front. 

What is stunning about the jacket is not the cut, or the style, though both are spectacular. What’s stunning about the jacket is the pattern. 

Rather than a traditional fabric, or even something more daring like a velvet or brocade, the rich black fabric is stitched with a jaguar-coat pattern in spectacular silks, which catch the light at different angles. They make the jacket look like it’s made of animal hide, leather of some kind, but when he brushes his fingertips along the sleeve he finds it to be as soft as down. 

He meets Auel’s eye and the only word he can manage to form is, “Who?”

“New designer, first official collection doesn’t debut until late next year. His name is Dior, and he hasn’t settled on a men’s line yet. This was one of his early bespoke creations.” Auel eases the jacket off the cream-colored silk padded hanger and motions for Patrick to put out his arms. He does, and Auel slips the fabric over his body, rubs his hands feather-light down Patrick’s shoulders and upper arms as the coat settles around his frame. It’s not quite the perfect look — that will come when the thin cotton of Patrick’s undershirt is replaced by a crisp, cream colored French cotton dress shirt, David’s shorts replaced by a wrap of midnight black tuxedo pants around the swell of Patrick’s thighs, his boots overtaken with the patina of a high-shine wingtip dress shoe. But the rest of that now seems like sheer frippery compared to the work of art Patrick is currently pulling tight enough to button. 

Patrick looks up and meets his eye and there’s a tentativeness there that David hasn’t seen on Patrick’s face since the first night they met, and seeing it there now reveals in stunning clarity just how much Patrick has changed in the last six days. It closes David’s throat, pricks at the corner of his eyes, makes his ribcage vice tighter around his heart. He clears his throat, tries to speak, and when his voice cracks on the first syllable, closes his mouth and clears his throat again. 

“What do you think?”

Patrick looks from David to the mirror, each of the three in turn, this time with much more purpose. There’s a light in his eyes that flares brighter with every passing second, as the gentle fingers that trace up and over the silk patterning become more steady as they pull at the lower hem, as Patrick shakes out his arms and attempts to fold the sleeves back so they hit at the wrist, and not just below. Auel makes a horrified little noise, and Patrick stops, but he’s grinning at David so brightly, so confidently, that David thinks if he could bottle that expression he’d be able to cure all the world’s ills. “I like it.” 

He says it like he’s never said anything else, like he’s waited his entire life to get to this moment, and as David looks at him Patrick’s eyes film with tears, and his face crumples. “Oh,” he whispers, staring at himself.

“Mm-mm,” David says, climbing the tailor’s platform behind him. Ari makes themselves scarce, but Auel simply steps away to give them a moment. Patrick’s staring at himself in the mirror with the same look in his eyes David had ten years ago, when Auel had put him in his first houndstooth jacket and velvet waistcoat, red socks and gray deerskin gloves.

David rubs his back, so gently, over the fine silk stitching, over the width of Patrick’s big shoulders. When Patrick looks up at him, the tears caught in his lashes trail down his face. “That’s me.” 

“Yes,” David says, softly, squeezing his arm with care and turning them just a little bit, so they can look at their reflections in the mirror. David, in his light gray morning coat with the red and dark gray checks, behind him. Patrick, in his evening coat that said, without words, exactly who he was. Unapologetically, without reserve. Proud. “That’s you, Patrick.” 

Hesitating hands run over his chest, down the plackets of the coat. “I look happy,” he says, with enough wonder in his voice that it guts David where he stands. 

“You do,” David murmurs, setting his chin there on Patrick’s shoulder. “Do you like it?”

“Yes,” Patrick breathes, and oh, that he should say that with tears wet on his cheeks. With that smile curving his beautiful mouth. 

“Then this is the one. The one you’ll wear tonight, to the cabaret.”

“Yes,” Patrick says again, and meets his eyes in the mirror. “Thank you, David.”

A thousand flirtations go through his mind, a thousand ways to downplay how affected he is. 

He doesn’t say any of them. Patrick isn’t thanking him for the suit, after all.

“You’re welcome, Patrick,” he says, and hopes that all which lives in his heart for this lovely man comes through.

The rest of the fitting goes quickly because Auel understands, now, the importance of what he’s doing, that this isn’t just a tuxedo for a show. He assures them that the suit will be ready by seven, with plenty of time before the nine o’clock show. Patrick shakes his hand for a few extra moments, says, “Thank you,” again in that quiet, wondering voice, and Auel looks a bit misty as he waves them out the door, demanding they leave him alone to let him work. 

Paris has been graced with mid-afternoon sunshine after days of overcast and soggy rain. David desperately wants to go back to the hotel and strip them both bare, with a need that shakes him to his boots, and that’s precisely how he knows he can’t. Once they come together, nothing and no one is going to take Patrick from him — not his sister, not Stevie, not _Le Lido._ The desperation for Patrick’s mouth, his body, his sweat, is overwhelming. 

Tonight. Tonight, after he’s spent an entire evening looking at Patrick in his new jacket, looking like starlight and living at his most authentic for the first time in his life. Tonight. 

He asks Patrick to take them to the Champ de Mars, the enormous park and tourist trap around the Eiffel Tower. Every visitor to this beautiful city should have the opportunity to have an ice cream at the Champ de Mars, David decides, and that is precisely what they do. The day has turned into a truly beautiful one, and there are children playing kickball and couples on picnic blankets enjoying the first, warm taste of spring. Patrick doesn’t seem to know where to look, first at the Tower, his eyes enormous with glee, then at the beautiful fountains, the manicured bushes and trees in ovals and squares, the acres of wildflowers. “You’re as smitten as a tourist,” David says, pleased despite himself. 

Patrick snorts, giving him the eye over his ice cream cone. “It’s beautiful here.” 

“Sure. For tourists,” David says, laughing when Patrick wrinkles his nose at him. “It is beautiful. The first time I came here as a little boy, I remember telling my mother that the tower had to be a miracle, because nothing could be so big.”

“I saw it for the first time last spring.”

David blinks at him. “You were here at the end of the Occupation?”

“August 25th. I’ll never forget it as long as I live.” 

It’s clear Patrick doesn’t want to say more on it. David will never be able to understand, not really, what Patrick went through, and he doesn’t pry, letting the quiet warm between them.

Their path takes them on a curved walkway along the Seine. It’s quieter here than the area surrounding the Tower. Ducks come in and out of the water, chicks in tow, and a swan comes sailing down to the water with gentle and practiced ease, barely causing a ripple on the surface of the river. 

He dares, for a moment, to take Patrick’s hand. Patrick, dares for a moment, to let him. The moment stretches, here in their solitude on this peaceful walk, and Patrick steps closer to his side, tangling their fingers together. Such a difference a few days could make. “What would our life be like, after the war?”

“What do you mean?” 

“If you weren’t a soldier, and I wasn’t me. If we’d met somewhere closer to home. If we had the freedom to be the people we wanted to be.” 

Patrick’s smile is breathtaking, and so beautiful, and full of regret, and pain, and everything David hadn’t said, couldn’t say. “That’s easy. I’d have helped you open your store.”

“You would?”

“Of course. I’d deal with the business side, the taxes and the permits, all of that. You’d be the creative one. Advertising, and speaking to vendors to stock their products, developing the business and the brand. Selling our store.”

 _Our store._ Said with such ease, painting a picture of such simple joy. Sharing their lives together, side by side. 

“What would we sell?” 

“All kinds of things. Local products. The things I grew up with in rural Canada.” Patrick smiles up at him. “Jams and jellies, soaps and perfumes. Cheese made by local farmers. Milk, and eggs, apricots and peaches. Fabric woven by artisans, the really fancy kind you can only get by people who make it themselves.”

If heaven were a place it would be right in this moment, looking to that golden future that would never be. David lets himself play along. “We’d have apothecary cabinets, and wooden tables for our goods. The second floor would sell all the things you can’t have in the front of a store.” 

“What can’t you have at the front of a store?”

“Personal products.” 

Patrick grins. “Don’t want the toilet plungers at the entryway?” 

“Can you imagine?” David shudders, offended by the mere idea to his _soul._ “And brooms, wash pans, undergarments, all those kinds of things. But we’d offer everything — it would be a one-stop-shop. A general store.” 

“But a very specific store,” Patrick says, amused.

“Would we live together?” David asks.

“Of course we would.” He says it so easily, so quickly, and if Patrick is surprised by the turn of their conversation, it doesn’t show. 

“A farmhouse? Something big and creaky with peeling white paint and wrap-around porch?”

“God, no. Too much upkeep by far. We’d have a little cottage.” 

“We would?” 

“Of course. One with a stone facade, and red shutters, and a white door.”

God. He can see it, as clearly as if it’s right in front of him. His throat is burning with tears, and he swallows around the lump as best he can. “And a little garden in the front, with azaleas and chrysanthemums.” 

“There’d still be a barn in the back,” Patrick says, and laughs when David gives him a horrified look. “No cows, I promise. We’d have horses, and chickens, and maybe a couple of goats to help tend the land and eat the weeds.”

“I like horses,” David says thoughtfully, suddenly realizing that not only could he _live_ with horses, but he’d enjoy them, if Patrick were at his side.

“They’re beautiful creatures. I’d teach you how to ride, and we’d take them out on the trails together.”

“I’d let you teach me,” David says, and Patrick smiles. 

He isn’t brave enough to ask, _Would we be married?_ because he knows what the answer will be, and this kind of talk has already opened a well of grief in him he can never come back from. Would never want to come back from. “Would we be happy?”

“The happiest, David,” and Patrick's voice is choked now, blinking rapidly as he looks out to the river beside them. “We’d be so happy.”

“I’ve never been happy before.”

Patrick looks at him, eyes glazed red. “I know, sweetheart. I haven’t either.

“I could be, I think,” David whispers. “With you.”

“Yes, you would,” Patrick says, and brings their hands up to kiss the back of David’s fingers. “I'd make you so, so happy. There, at that little cottage in that little town where we build a life.” He sniffs wetly and, hand still clutching David's, drags the back of his hand across his eyes. David can feel the soft wet of tears on the back of his fingers and the drops sting like acid. He reaches out with his index finger, so quickly it's hard to see, and wipes away the next line of tears threatening to spill. He hears Patrick's breath catch and David tries to force even a kernel of legitimate joy through the layers of bitter resentment tugging at the corners of his mouth like lead weights.

Patrick leans slightly into his touch and sucks back a sob that echoes in his chest, muted and strangled and a circle of spikes around David’s diaphragm. He presses his eyes shut and wills his heartbeat to steady. One of them has to keep their balance in the streets, and Patrick’s been so strong at every turn since he’s met David, David can feel it growing in the steadiness of his legs, the solidity filling his chest as he allows Patrick’s emotions to wash over him. He will be the strong one this time. If the man he loves — _loves_ — is falling apart, David will do the only good thing that’s ever been in his power to do, and he’ll hold himself together.

Their hands drop, and Patrick sways towards him like he’s thinking about putting his head on David’s shoulder, and David’s heart skips a beat, but Patrick doesn’t, stopping a fraction of an inch from David, the thin layer of air between them a buffer between the things they want and the things the world expects of them. Even now, even after everything. Patrick stays in David’s space and breathes long ragged breaths through his nostrils, and they wait. For what David doesn’t know, but he knows it when the moment comes. 

The wave of grief that’s been cresting between them breaks, and in its wake, like the calm after the storm, there’s a certain kind of peace when it’s gone, not a joyful peace, but a strange absence of feeling. A calmness. David reaches tentatively for the spark of joy that burns in the shape of _Le Lido,_ and says a silent prayer of thanks to the universe to find it still burning. 

“Come on,” he says, his voice gruff. “Let’s get back to the Gaston. If we hurry, we might have time to watch Alexis and Stevie make weird faces at each other from across the lobby.”

Patrick laughs, and nods, his body falling in besides David as they begin the slow walk back to the hotel, the sunshine bright but remarkably cold.

* 

By the time they’re ready to go, David’s lost count of the miles he’s paced into the carpet, waiting for Patrick to open the door. He’d been practically thrown out of the bathroom damn near an hour ago, shortly after Ari had dropped off the suit from Auel, their eyes wide and inquisitive as they scoured the sliver of room visible behind David’s open door. David can only imagine what they’d been looking for, but he’d chuckled at the tiny disappointment that flitted across the young person’s face when he’d gently closed the door. 

Patrick had taken the garment bag from David’s hands surprisingly quickly, his hand steady and his eyes almost hungry. David had been expecting to help him dress, to show him how to perfectly layer the several pieces of suit so that they cut Patrick’s silhouette in exactly the way David had been imagining that all afternoon, but then Patrick had clutched the hanger and shooed David out of the bathroom with a calm reassurance, a kiss to the shoulder, and a final swat on the hip before the door clicked closed. Luckily, David had finished his grooming routine by that time, so there was nothing left for him to do but dress, and wait for Patrick. 

Patrick still hasn’t come out of the bathroom when the fluttering series of knocks on the door alerts him to Alexis’s arrival. He crosses to the door and opens it without a word, immediately turning back to his little stretch of carpet, his socked feet padding across the floor as his fingertips press into the thin line of his lips 

“Oh my God, David, who died?”

“What?! No one!”

His sister rolls her eyes at him, sweeping in without a blink, her dressing gown trailing after her. She’s already wearing something for tonight under the robe but all David catches is a flash of pink on his next turn across the room. “Sorry, the look on your face. You look like Mom did after Dad told her they’d taken her name off that south facing alley near Radio City.”

“ _Please_ do not bring that up here.” His mother had been inconsolable for a week, locking herself in a closet that was, in fairness, bigger than the room in which they were currently standing. 

Alexis plops herself on the corner of the bed, crossing her legs and squinting at him in that way she does that drives David insane, if only because she only ever used it to make herself look cute and it works _every time._ “Oh my God. Fall off a bridge, please.”

“You gave me _such_ a hard time for getting involved with a soldier, and then you just french the first guy in uniform who looks your way.”

David scowls at her and throws himself onto the armchair beside the bed, sighing explosively. “Theodore was crazy about you, and the feeling at the time was not mutual. You’d have broken his heart, which let's agree is _not_ the kind of mindset a man needs to go _fight a war._ ” Of all the men David had seen come in and out of his sister's life, he’d never seen one that left ripples like Theodore Mullins.

“You’re deflecting,” Alexis hums, pulling two nail files out of the pocket of her dressing gown and handing him one. “Edges.” 

He glares at her, but takes it. “It’s different, with Patrick. This is the healthiest relationship I’ve ever had.”

“It’s been five days, David.”

“I know.”

His sister has always known how to rip through all of his defenses, his walls, as if they were tissue paper. She’s much smarter than anyone gives her credit for, much more than her perfect looks and movie star figure make her seem. And right now, her narrowed eyes, the slight tilt of her frown, tells him that she’s caught on that this is more than a dalliance. More than a shared moment in time. “Patrick is a sweet little buttonface,” she finally says. “Don’t mess this up.”

He opens his mouth to rebut, but he hears the bathroom door click open behind him and he spins on his heel, his heart racing like it did the first night he’d opened a show at the gallery. 

Patrick’s standing in the doorway of the bathroom and — _oh._ The jacket hangs a fraction of an inch more perfectly than it had at Auel’s, the power of a precise tailoring, and David had been exactly right in assuming that completing the look would take Patrick from stunning to transcendent. The thin grey line of piping down the outside of his tuxedo pants makes the shifting silver hues of the jacket pop, and David will never know where Auel managed to find slate grey wingtips, but he makes a mental note to double the size of his annual birthday gift to the man. But more than any one aspect of the suit, it’s the transformation it’s brought to the man inside it that takes David’s breath away.

Patrick’s shoulders are rolled back, and there’s a dewy glow to his complexion that makes the low golden light of the bedroom bounce off his cheek. His eyes are alive, and joyful, and he’s rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet slightly, like he’s standing on an edge and ready to jump. And in their time together, David has seen Patrick intrigued, and pensive, frustrated and heartbroken and joyous. But he’s just now realizing that he’s never seen Patrick so comfortably, completely at ease in his own skin. And if David is just now seeing it, and it’s making his head swim and his knees go weak, he can’t imagine the overwhelming storm that must be sitting in Patrick’s chest right now.

“Patrick!” Alexis chirps behind him, and whatever spell had fallen over the room in the last thirty seconds is broken. Patrick meets his sister’s eye and smiles that much bigger, his chest swelling slightly, the military rigidity David’s seen before in the set of his shoulders shifting to something softer, but no less assured. 

“Alexis, hello! I didn’t hear you get here.” He’s talking to Alexis but he’s looking at David as he crosses the space between the bathroom and the tiny loveseat. His eyes haven’t left David’s face since the moment he stepped out of the bathroom. David knows, because his haven’t left Patrick, either. “What do you think?”

He’d asked Patrick that in the store, and he’d broken open a part of himself even David hadn’t seen buried there. It’s David’s turn, and he feels the words working their way out like a baby plant popping through the soil, tender and fragile but so, so strong. “You look like you.”

Patrick sucks in a breath, and Alexis mutters, “well, of course he does,” but David has gone so hot inside he’s cold again. He pushes on and adds:

“And you are _stunning._ ” 

Patrick blushes and brings his hand to cup the back of his neck, like he doesn’t quite know what to say — or knows exactly what he wants to say, but can’t in Alexis’s presence. It’s supremely satisfying, and David reaches up to tweak Patrick’s bowtie gently, smoothing one of the edges carefully. 

“Are we ready?” Patrick asks.

David finally manages to pull his eyes away from Patrick’s face to look at his sister, eyebrow quirked. “I don’t know. Are we?” She gives them a little smile and a shrug and slips open the button holding her dressing gown closed. She lets it fall from her arms before folding it in half and tossing it gently on David’s bed. 

The pink brocade silk hugs to Alexis’s body, highlighting the subtle curves in her thin frame. The dark pink is shot through with splashes and swirls of lighter, near-white baby pink and a thin thread of gold that makes the whole thing seem to glow. She has ruffles at her wrists, her neck, her elbow, stiffer pleats of blush-pink tulle connected by thin threads of pearls and gold-set chip diamonds. There’s a miniature train of floaty silk that trickles over her hips and almost to her knees. She’s wearing the bow-toed t-strap Ferragamos David had given her last Christmas, and there’s a thin gold band wrapped around her head, thin golden chains peppered with the same diamonds that line her arms, falling into the folds of her curls. She looks like a fairy princess dressed up for Ziegfield’s Follies, and even David can’t help but tell her so.

“You look beautiful.”

She smiles, and the blush on her cheeks deepens, but she slaps him on the forearm as she takes the nail file back from him. “I know, silly.” She arches a brow. “Do you think Stevie will like it?”

“Why would Stevie care?” David’s brow furrows. He pats his pockets to make sure he’s got his billfold, his watch, the small key for the room door. Now that they’re dressed, the press of minutes until the show feels more dire, more direct, and David begins to usher them all out the door, but not before gesturing to Alexis’s dressing gown on the bed. “Were you just going to leave that, or...?” 

She wrinkles her nose at him but snatches it up with a huff, trailing past them like a blond and pink cupcake, light as air. “I’m going to get my bag and my purse.”

“And the tickets. My God,” he gasps, “I didn’t even check the dates.”

“Ugh! David!”

“We’d flown to _Milan._ " 

“It was a one-time mistake! Will you ever let me live it down?”

“She swapped the month and the day,” David tells Patrick. “We were a month late to Betty Grable’s wedding. She hasn’t spoken to us since. 

“I didn’t want to be in her USO show anyway,” Alexis says, swanning out of the room on a trail of perfume.

The mirth on Patrick’s face is bright, and David beams, traces his thumb along that lovely smile. “You look beautiful, Patrick.”

“Thank you,” Patrick whispers, and presses David’s hand to his cheek with one of his, turning his face to kiss David’s palm. “So do you.”

David’s go-to tuxedo, in red burgundy with silver detailing and black piping, is spectacular, but it’s Patrick who’ll have all eyes on him tonight. Just the way it should be. “I’m the luckiest man alive.”

“Sorry, that title is already taken,” Patrick murmurs, reaching up to kiss him, and from the doorway Alexis hisses, “I was gone for less than a _minute._ ”

“Oh my _God_ Alexis,” David says, but he’s smiling too much for it to have bite. 

“Come on, you two. Let’s go before we really are late.” He presses another kiss to David’s temple and winks at Alexis as he crosses to the corner and grabs overcoats for him and David, gesturing Alexis towards the door. She boops him on the nose as she passes, and David feels such fondness fill his chest that it threatens to close his throat. 

*

They’d spent a fair portion of the afternoon debating whether to walk, or drive, to _Le Lido._ Walking, as the girls argued, would give them the chance to see _and_ be seen, and more flexibility in departure time and partners after the show. However, as David stridently reminded them, walking also meant ruining their shoes, developing body sweat, and missing the chance to drive a _truly_ stunning vehicle down the Champs Élysée for the first time in years. At the end of it, they’d settled for a car to the theatre, and home, and on-foot in between, which left all of them equally unsatisfied until the moment the Triumph pulled up in front of the Gaston. Deep maroon and shining silver accents make the squat, convertible roadster looks like a car fit for the Devil himself and made for sin. 

“Do I want to know where you got us a car to drive, let alone _this_ car to drive, on such late notice?” He whispers to David as Stevie finishes making arrangements with the young man dropping off the car. David shrugs and uses his chin to point in Stevie’s direction. She looked ready to paint the town red in her skin-tight purple gown, back plunging towards the curve of her hips, black sun-beam banding radiating outwards from the waist, around the swell of her ass and towards the floor, drawing the eye around her like the work of art she is. Her eyes are rimmed in black and there’s a trio of purple and black feathers peeking out of the beaded rosette on her headband.

She’d stopped all of them in their tracks when they’d hit the lobby that evening and now, as she pulls up the hemline to allow her the movement to slide into the half-seat lining the back of the otherwise two-seat sports car, David’s reminded just what it was that had gotten the two of them into such trouble all those years ago. 

“Stevie’s a magician,” David says. “She never helps, until she does. And then…" 

“And then, indeed,” Patrick says as Stevie sticks out a hand and helps Alexis settle into the seat next to. Alexis is practically sitting in her lap, but neither of them seem to mind as Stevie finds the two of them standing on the curb and waves impatiently.

“Brewer! Get the lead out and let’s go!” 

Patrick nods and David laughs and sighs as he slips into the warm black leather seat, the heavy metal door thudding shut. Above them, he can barely make out the press of stars through the lights of the Parisian night, but those he does see seem to shine a little brighter, promise a little more as Patrick pulls out into traffic and David lets his hand trail through the currents of air that buffer over the smooth, bulbous wheel well 

His head feels heavy on his neck as he turns it to look at Patrick, to watch the deftness in his hands as he switches gears, returns to a 10-and-2 position that puts him in steady, reliable control of the vehicle. David had thought he might need directions, but he doesn’t seem to, and David let’s his brain whirr as his body stills and the potential of the night settles into the space between his vertebrae. He feels drunk, but he’s not, or high, which he’s not, or like he’s been thoroughly fucked out, which he hasn’t been. Yet. The magic of the last several days has woven a web around them all, and even though David can see the threads beginning to fray with every tick of the clock, at the moment they’re all still trapped inside it’s spun-sugar serendipity. 

The opening show of _Le Lido_ is going to be _Sans Rimes ni Raisons,_ and from the moment they pass through the warm wood paneled lobby and coat check, David does indeed feel like any sense of rhyme or reason leaves him completely. The preview tickets Alexis had somehow magicked into existence, put them in the lower orchestra seats, stage right side, and from there, it was truly overwhelming. They sank into the plush red velvet, Patrick immediately reaching over take David’s hand as his eyes roved over the decorative molding, the gold filigree arching over the ceiling, the diamond-dripping chandeliers that dotted the tall ceilings and made it seem like God himself that instead of one rainbow, the world needed to be bathed in thousands. Even David, who’d been told some of what to expect by others lucky enough to attend, was as good as blown away 

And then the lights lowered. 

The next few hours pass in that strange way that all the best times do. The show opens with a troupe of dancers, an up-and-coming group David has already heard buzz about, and the blonde vedette who leads them — Margaret Kelly, it says in the program — is absolutely magnetic. David is unable to keep his eyes off the way the women move in sync, towering above the stage in their heels and feathered headdresses, the music deep enough to throb in the seats beneath them like a second heartbeat emanating from the building itself. The Bluebell Girls finish and the music transitions into something slower, and more intimate, as a brunette woman is lowered from the ceiling on a large silver ring. 

She dips her body out of the circle, holding on with one hand, and begins to spin, weaving herself in and out of the metal like she’s weightless, flying, unscared of plummeting to the hard floor beneath her. It lodges something underneath David’s sternum, to watch someone create beauty in the face of such clear risk of danger. He squeezes Patrick’s hand, and doesn’t let go until the number ends and the dancers are back, their costumes a much brighter, robin's egg shade of blue as they can-can their way into place, bare breasts bouncing and legs kicking at increasingly impressive heights. When that number ends, David leans over and uses the cover of applause to mutter to Patrick, “what did I tell you about tits?” And Patrick’s laugh is loud enough to hear over the crowd. 

The night continues like that, a clamorous hodgepodge of music, and dance, contortionists and jugglers, acts disparate enough that they shouldn’t would work together and yet all bleed into one another, serve to push one another in adding another layer to the audience’s wonder, or entertainment, or joy, that it somehow all manages to coalesce perfectly. David feels the muscles in his body relax, feels some of the constantly carried small tensions beginning to drain from his shoulders and the back of his knees. He feels the warmth and slow comfort of knowing he’s in a place he belongs, in the presence of people who will understand some small part of him, and the deeper they get into the night, the more he finds himself looking from the stage to Patrick, contextualizing his own enjoyment with the looks that flit across Patrick’s face. 

The final number before the finale begins in complete darkness, and David takes the chance to shift position in his seat, pressing a small kiss to Patrick’s cheek in the shuffle. Patrick leans his body closer to David’s, but his eyes are glued to the stage, and David can’t blame him. 

Holding a single candle, one of the most stunning women David’s ever seen walks across the stage. There’s a simple violin playing behind her, and from the wings a chorus of voices sing their way through _La Vie en Rose._ The candlelight throws shadows across her face that catch the dramatic lines of her brow and cheek, the fullness of her lips, and David is reminded of Marlene. She stops center stage and sets the candle on a small table, the lights above her coming on just enough to make her visible as she turns and begins to slowly peels her long-sleeved, backless black gown from her body in a movement that’s half strip tease, half dance, and completely entrancing. 

David gasps at the vivid red rose inked down the performer’s spinal column, thorns on the stem visible from where he sits, and his fingers itch to reach out and touch it. He’s so focused on the way it dips and slides across the woman’s long spine, tendrils expanding outwards across her broad shoulders, that he misses it when she turns around, and it takes him an extra second to realize what he’s seeing. What’s made Patrick gasp and go stock-still behind him.

Because the woman turns, and in the full display of nudity, it’s not just her back that’s covered in tattoos. Her body drips with them, roses in full bloom, curled into tight buds, deep emerald green vines that run between the flowers. The only breaks are where the hemlines of the dress had fallen, and at her hip creases, where the soft curves of her body give way to the familiar lines of male anatomy, and David’s heart catches in his throat. 

Other than the man sitting to his left, it’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen in his life. 

The song ends and the final number and it should be the only thing David can focus on. The music is loud, especially in contrast to the number that just finished, and the lights dance across the stage. Portions of the floor slide back to reveal fountains of water, thin streams that jump and bounce across the stage in rhythm with the dancers. But even with all that, and the energy and excitement of the crowd behind him, all David can see is Patrick's face. 

He's got this look on his face that's...it's blank, but it's a blankness that comes not from absence, but from complete overabundance. His eyes are shining with unshed tears, and his breaths are coming fast. He has his hand not wrapped in David’s pressed against his mouth, although David can tell by the curve of his cheeks that he's grinning. He squeezes Patrick’s hand in his, and when the final number ends and the entire house erupts in a standing ovation, David uses the noise to lean over and whisper: “I know. I feel it, too.”

Patrick’s eyes widen a fraction of an inch, and he leans in, his mouth close to David’s ear, and half-shouts, “What is it?" 

David pauses for a moment, his hands in motion and his eyes glued to the dancers, performers, and orchestra members who take their turns in bowing for applause. He watches the crowd around him cheer, feels the collective buoyancy that he’s only ever felt during live performances. “It’s seeing. And being seen.” 

And when he pulls back enough to meet Patrick’s eyes, he sees yet another Patrick looking back at him. David keeps thinking he’s seen every version of this beautiful, layered, puzzle box of a human being, and keeps being so wonderfully surprised when that turns out not to be the case. Patrick begins to applaud, loudly, adding his own whoops and hollers to the general chaos, and then they’re spilling out into the street, all four of them, arms looped together as they make their way down the street, following the general flow of the crowd out of the building. 

They decide, on a whim, that they’re not ready for the night to end, and why not? They’re young, free from life’s obligations, at least tonight. It’s the kind of night David lives for, arm-in-arm with Stevie as his sister walks ahead with Patrick at her side, waving her hands wildly and David just knows that before the end of the season his sister is going to have a cancan feathered headdress with accompanying bird, if only to gloat that she saw _Le Lido’s_ show before they even opened. 

Stevie is sparkling, the melancholy that’s been dogging her footsteps gone from her face, and David knows why, knows she can feel it too. 

They end up on the same street as the underground speakeasy, the familiar dressmakers awning catching David’s attention, and it’s precisely what he’s in the mood for — drinks, caviar, the press of bodies and jazz music. An atmosphere welcoming to all people, and after the show tonight David has a feeling Patrick needs that. The man in black tie at the door of the dressmaker’s shop lets them in, and then they’re clattering down the wooden steps, towards the trombones and saxophones playing their nightly audience. It’s a good band tonight, trumpets blaring and horns in concert, and Alexis flashes him a smile over Patrick’s shoulder so bright and so overjoyed that he doesn’t think he’ll ever forget it. 

Michel sees them from the moment they arrive, and peppers Alexis’s cheeks with kisses, speaking in such rapid-fire French that David’s certain his sister is only catching one word in ten. They’re led to their table, and within minutes champagne is flowing and Stevie can’t stop laughing. Patrick is regaling them with a play-by-play of the closing number of the show, as if they all hadn’t seen it. “There were water fountains. On stage!” he says, and Alexis giggles so much she almost drops her wine glass. 

“Didn’t notice the fountains, to be honest,” Stevie says, satisfied as a cat and David knows just what she’s going to say before she says it. “The vedette, right? 

“Beautiful,” Alexis agrees, locking eyes with Stevie, “though not the most beautiful I’ve ever seen.”

There’s something going on there, but the silent conversation his sister and his best friend are having is too far over his head. 

Stevie smirks, and the way the feathers from her hairpiece caress her cheek makes her look as beguiling and beautiful as she really is. “Really?" 

“Mmhmm.”

“They were very perky, Alexis. 

“They were, weren’t they?”

Patrick has gone _pink_ and both girls laugh out loud. Alexis boops his nose and says, “Oh Button,” and then grabs Stevie’s hand and drags her away from the table, disappearing into the crowd.

Patrick blink-blinks, and David shakes his head. “Don’t ask me — I stopped trying to figure them out ages ago.”

The band is _loud_ tonight, and the champagne is fantastic, and David decides that if there was ever a moment to take a chance, this is it, right here and right now. 

He smiles at Patrick across the table, in his gorgeous jacket, his dark eyes sparkling with life, his cheeks pink. He lays a hand out on the table, palm up, as the song transitions to something slower 

“Oh.”

David’s lips curve. “Mmm? 

“Yes,” Patrick says, almost desperately, and takes his hand. “Yes, please.”

A woman in a floor-length, beaded black gown takes the stage, her feather boa trailing after her, the gloss of her dark curls tumbling down narrow shoulders. And then she starts singing, and David knew he made the right call. It’s one of his favorite songs, and he’s heard countless different singers attempt it, but in the woman’s voice is optimism, and joy, and simple, perfect pleasure.

There are dozens of other couples on the dance floor, and Patrick is so _shy,_ but somehow they come together so easily it’s as if they didn’t even have to think about it — didn’t have to even try. Patrick fits so perfectly in his arms, his palm at the center of Patrick’s back, their hands tangled together.

The woman sings, “ _I seem to find the happiness I seek when we're out together dancing, cheek to cheek,_ ” and Patrick laughs in his ear, his breath warm on his skin. David looks around him and the room seems to sway, a weird sort of vertigo overlaying the night five nights ago on top of this one. Patrick, quivering at the table, a leaf on the wind ready to blow away at the slightest breeze, his cheeks pale in the low lamplight and the _want_ rolling off of him in waves. The way something had hooked in behind David’s navel and pulled as they talked wine, and art, and took the first step down a path neither of them could have seen leading here. Together. Arm in arm and surrounded by a subset of the world who doesn’t care. 

It’s perfect. Or will be, when that world keeps shrinking to the only two people in it that matter.

The song ends, and David glances up to see Stevie leaning forward and lighting a hand-rolled cigarette dangling loosely in Alexis’s lips. It flares, the dims, then flares again before it finally catches and David’s lit enough marijuana cigarettes in his life to know: whatever the girls are up to, they’re going to be fine if they’re in it together. So he slides his hand down Patrick’s back, across his hip, and into Patrick’s waiting grasp. The head back to the stairs, David pressing two soft kisses into Michel’s cheeks and slipping him a bundle of bills as they make their way back up the stairs. The night air is already cooler than it had been when they’d gone down, and they take their time walking back to the car, their strides short and slow and indulgent. 

Patrick can’t stop smiling, like his face has forgotten what it’s like to do anything but radiate happiness. He looks lit up from within, like a fire ignited somewhere in him that has been waiting for years to catch the spark. He’s almost shaking with it, and David thinks that this is what Patrick will remember most about him, about this time they’ve spent together. This feeling, which will live in Patrick’s heart for the rest of his life. A door opened can never be shut again, after all. 

“I’m so glad you liked the show.”

“Liked? David. _Water fountains._

He laughs helplessly. “Water fountains,” he agrees. “Did you like the dancers? 

“They were spectacular. I can’t believe they used to put on shows like that in _night clubs._ ”

“They were spectacular,” David says on a sigh, because some of his happiest, and saddest, memories are of going to those shows on Sebastien’s arm. Some part of the cabaret’s charm would always be tainted because of it, though getting to experience it with Patrick tonight had certainly built new memories for him. “What did you think of The Rose?”

“It was the most beautiful performance I’ve ever seen,” Patrick breathes out, fingers flexing in David’s and squeezing tightly. “I didn’t… I’ve ever…”

“No, you haven’t. Neither have I,” David says, gently. “That’s what made the performance so special. So extraordinary. What they were trying to say through dance.”

“I feel as if every time I have a handle on this world, I see something new and it rewrites everything I thought I’d learned,” Patrick says. David glances at him, surprised, and Patrick looks helplessly back. “Every experience makes me feel as if I’m discovering another new part of myself. I like it, David. I like the person I’m becoming.”

“The person you’ve always been,” David corrects, gently, and lifts their hands to kiss the back of Patrick’s hand.

“The person you’ve helped me see,” Patrick amends, and David’s chest splinters down the middle. They arrive back at the car and Patrick holds the door open for him again, and the fact that the night has gone so quickly, each moment an eternity that combined have sped by in a heartbeat, begins to eat at him from the outside edges. He can feel it tightening his throat, and causing his fingers to curl into his palms, but he forces himself to breathe and push it away and make a list of all the things he still plans to do with Patrick before sleep takes them. It’s a list that’s going to require a closed door, a sturdy lock, and Patrick’s complete trust — he doesn’t get more than a few bullets down the list before he cannot wait to get back to the Gaston.

*

David closes the hotel door behind them with a _click_ and sighs contentedly, surprised at how quickly the Gaston has come to feel like home again. There’s something domestic in the way he and Patrick slip off their overcoats in silence, toe out of their shoes, David’s hand braced on Patrick’s forearm for balance.

Patrick smiles, unguarded and open and so fucking beautiful. He has no idea what’s about to happen. 

No idea how David is going to have him.

David puts his tuxedo jacket down on the chair by the fireplace, turning lamps on as he crosses to his record player. It takes him a moment to find the record, the slow blues jazz that Stevie had given him years ago. It’s completely unlike the music they’ve been listening to all night. It had been born in whisky-drenched nightclubs in Harlem, sung by throaty baritones and played on guitars with such slow, wandering beats that it feels like the pulse of sex. That’s the point, after all 

The singer croons about the blues being the end of her, and David’s eyes travel across Patrick’s body, finally letting himself _look_ after an evening of denial. The solid length of his chest, those thighs David’s had around his ears as Patrick groaned so prettily. Those strong arms, the broad shoulders that filled out his sweaters, and that waist, the muscle that bunched under his skin, flexed with every helpless, sobbing thrust upwards. The way Patrick trembled and shook and shivered under him, tentative fingers in David’s hair. 

_Christ._ He’s done denying himself tonight. David’s going to make a meal of him, and he’s going to enjoy every bite. 

He wants, with a depth he has rarely experienced. He wants to take Patrick apart to his component pieces, to the place where all the noises he keeps bitten back behind his teeth live. He wants Patrick to cry from the force of the pleasure David is going to give him, spilling unexpected down his face as David touches him in just the right places that make him sing 

He crosses the room to Patrick, and there they stand, face to face, for an eternity of moments. The want in him is burning itself into a flame, but this is no time for the animal pleasures David has spent a lifetime engaging in. Animal sex, with people who didn’t love him, or loved him the wrong way — trying to meld and mold himself into something beautiful, something people could want. That kind of sex doesn’t belong here, not like that, not anymore. Not with the man he’s fallen in love with. 

Patrick’s breath has started to quicken, and David smiles 

It’s an easy thing, to wrap his arms around Patrick in a hug. Patrick hasn’t had enough of them in his life, because he clamps himself around David and hugs back just as tightly, and God, _God._

Patrick smells expensive, like fine tailoring and the best champagne in the world, the woodsy notes of his cologne behind his ears. David runs his nose gently along that long length, throat to earlobe and then back down again, running his tongue delicately along the starched white collar of his dress shirt. “You smell like me” he murmurs, as Patrick’s fingers tighten on his arms and the groan rumbles deep down in his chest. 

“That is becoming a running theme with you,” Patrick says, turning his head to give David more room at his pulse point, that little spot that makes him shiver and his hips judder in an aborted thrust. “Though I can’t fault the results.”

David smiles into the thin skin of Patrick’s throat, and lets go with one arm, just enough to pop the jacket’s button. “I’ve been wanting to do this all night.”

“Open my jacket?”

“Mmhmm. It’s like a present all for me.” He slides his hands around that thick waist under the soft viscose of the jacket, the slip of Patrick’s dress shirt like satin against his fingertips. “What are we going to do tonight, Patrick? 

“Do?” Patrick asks, head tipping back as David’s thumbs slide over the peaks of his nipples, rubbing gently and sending his hips shuddering again. He groans, low in his throat. “ _Oh._ ”

“Mmhmm. Do. Are we going to neck right here against the wall, your pretty hips twitching as you try to get some pressure where you want it most? Or are you going to press me down to my knees, put my mouth to use? 

Patrick sucks in a shocked breath, so beautiful, so sensitive and turned on and he _hasn’t even been kissed,_ and David feels so powerful he thinks he could take on the entire world, if Patrick asked. “D-David.”

“I love the way you tug on my hair, though you don’t mean to. Try to pull me deeper.”

Patrick is wordless, shocked and trembling. His cock flexes against David’s, jerking with how turned on he is, trapped behind fabric and buttons. David wants to bury his face there and never leave. “ _David._ ”

“There are other things,” David murmurs, running his nose up Patrick’s temple, then down to press kisses along the side of his face, his jaw. Patrick keeps trying to catch his mouth but David won’t let him, because he likes the way Patrick chases his kisses, and because he wants to watch that mouth tremble. “Things men do together. Things I want you to do to me. 

David slides his hands down over Patrick’s ass, squeezing tight enough that it lifts Patrick to his toes, then nearly off them, and when David lets him find his feet again his breath explodes from him like a gunshot, leaves him panting and squirming. 

God, so _sensitive._ He’d enjoy it, if David put him on his belly and spread those gorgeous cheeks to get his mouth on him. Just the _thought,_ face buried in this beautiful ass, is enough to make heat prickle down David’s spine, over his scalp, down his ears and neck. He’d beg for David’s cock, long after he was opened and softened and made ready. He’d moan in David’s arms, the two of them up on their knees and Patrick steadying them against the bruising force of David’s lovemaking with both hands on the headboard. He’d be insensate and stunned from the pleasure David could wring from his body, David stroking him hard and fast until Patrick exploded, until his eyes rolled back in his head and he lost his grip on the world 

Later. Tomorrow. They still have tomorrow. This time, David wants gentle, wants Patrick to whimper and squirm, his body sluggish and tired. Fingers back inside, muscles fluttering around David’s joints, working Patrick’s prostate until it’s swollen to the touch. David’s mouth gentle on his cock, and this time when he brought Patrick over it would be sweet and slow. And after, after, he’d tuck Patrick into bed, and snuggle up behind him, stroke his twitching belly and nose against his sweaty hairline and thank whoever was watching them for every single moment he had been given with this beautiful man.

God. _God._ The things David would teach Patrick. Not just the pleasures good sex could bring, but what they could learn together about trust, and how it can strengthen the mortar of a life together. How wanting could be full of laughter and play or hot and slow. That it could be fun, and gentle, and full of love.

 _You’ll never have that,_ something in him, something that has hurt his entire life, whispers.

It’s meant for a different Patrick and David. A Patrick and David who have a store together, and own a little cottage with red shutters, and who’ve had the time to let their love grow roots. A David who can take his time teaching Patrick about all the joy his body could give him. A David who has years to look forward to. 

Right here, right now, they don’t have that time. They have tonight. And all David can hope for is that he’ll be able to look back on tonight with — if not happiness — than something better than grief 

He sinks slowly, to his knees, and stares up at Patrick, hands slipping down those strong legs, up the backs of his thighs. “Let me suck you.” he says, and nuzzles his cheek against the hard length of Patrick’s gorgeous cock, just to watch the smoke come over Patrick’s eyes, darkening them, tightening them in arousal and need. “I’ve wanted your cock in me since the first moment I laid eyes on you.”

“Here?” Patrick dips his thumb between David’s lips and oh, _oh._ David’s gut flips _hard_ and his eyes flutter shut on a groan. Patrick strokes along the ridge of his teeth, to the side of his tongue, then deep, fucking his mouth with _his thumb,_ and David’s cock gives an urgent jerk between his legs, trapped by his tuxedo pants and begging for relief.

“Mmhmm,” he mumbles again, and as Patrick’s thumb leaves his mouth to stroke his cheek, leaving a trail of wet, he follows it, kisses the heel of Patrick’s hand, his wrist. “Always in my mouth. But that’s not what I mean.” He presses a kiss to Patrick's erection, and feels the heat of his body through the layers of fabric.

For the first time tonight Patrick looks uncertain, and a little lost. “I don’t — I’ve never — ”

“I know,” David says, shivering despite himself because what good deed had he done in his life to deserve this bounty? “We don’t have to.”

“Oh, God, David no I — I want to, I just. I don’t want to hurt you,” Patrick breathes. 

Another piece breaks off of David’s heart. “You won’t, I promise. We’ll go slow. I’ll teach you. 

He'll teach him and then he'll lose him. He'll show him the things he wishes he'd known, wish he'd had someone to walk him through, and then he'll send him out into a life that doesn't contain David. He'll teach him for when Patrick goes back to the war, and then eventually back to his life. David _hates_ that there will be others, but he's grateful, too. Patrick needs to be loved, deserves to be cherished and looked after, and if he can find the courage to live his truth he hopes there will be a man who will love him and take care of him like the treasure he is.

The want in him has his hands shaking as he undoes the button of Patrick's pants, hungry suddenly, _starving._ He pulls both Patrick’s pants and underwear down in one fluid movement. He takes the time to ease Patrick’s legs and feet out of both, tossing them over his shoulder, and David swallows Patrick as deeply as he can before he hears them hit the ground. Patrick hisses and David hears his head fall heavily against the wall with a thud. His hands wind into David's hair and this he doesn't have to be taught, has never had to be taught.

It’s not enough, not nearly deep enough, and he swallows around Patrick to fill his throat with the taste of him, to feel the salty, bitter slide of precome down the back of his throat where Patrick is leaking freely, his hips already pushing, out of his control, into David’s face. David presses a broad palm to Patrick’s hip, forcing him back against the wall, and Patrick whines as David chuckles, low and throaty, a trail of spit falling out of his mouth and over his chin. He swallows again before he moves, just to hear Patrick moan, and then he begins to drag his mouth slowly up and down Patrick’s length once, twice, a third time before he pulls off completely with a loud pop that fills the space around them.

Patrick moans, guttural and low, and David presses his face there against the crease of his thigh, swallowing down the whining he can feel starting in his chest with how good this feels. He rubs his face against the long, solid length of Patrick’s cock, wrapping his arms around Patrick’s hips to hug him as tightly as he dares. “Christ, David,” Patrick breathes, leaning down to press his face into David’s hair. “You’re so beautiful, so perfect. Your mouth is Heaven.”

“If you think that’s heaven, brace yourself for what comes next,” David mumbles into Patrick’s pelvis, and hears Patrick laugh shakily above him. He looks up, then, and Patrick cups his face, and oh. Oh, God. David sits back on his heels and braces a hand on his thigh to leverage himself to standing, but he’s half way there where Patrick’s arms dart out and slip under his arms, helping to right David and then steady him once he’s got his feet beneath him. Patrick’s pupils are completely blown, and he’s looking at David like it’s Christmas morning and David is a present he wants to tear open. And oh, how David’s going to let him.

David takes Patrick’s hand in his and walks backwards until his thighs press against the mattress. He stops, so Patrick stops, his eyes burning into David. He reaches over to the night stand, where he pulls out a small glass bottle and setting it next to the bed with a gentle click, and begins to undress. Patrick watches him. Studies him. David can feel the heat of his gaze, feeling it warm the skin that stretches across his collarbone, spans the front of his neck, covers the sharp angles of his cheekbones. Patrick is all over him and still six inches away and it fills David with longing. 

He’s naked, then, in all his somewhat limited glory. He strokes a hand down the painfully hard length of his own cock, and asks, “Are you going to kiss me then?”

Patrick’s eyes are black with longing, but he presses a single, delicate kiss to the curve of David’s lips. “I’ve wanted to do this since I met you.”

“What’s that?” David asks, but Patrick just tips him over the bed and sends him sprawling across the mattress.

He’s laughing as Patrick scrambles out of his clothes, wincing at the pop of buttons, the small clatter of them hitting the floor, even as he wiggles backwards and opens his legs, bending his knees and pulling them up. Patrick groans, throaty and low, his eyes darting from David’s thighs, to his hand slowly stripping his cock, to his balls and then down, low, to what David is offering. To what he wants. His hands start to shake as he yanks his undershirt over his head, and David hisses, arching his back as he strokes over a particularly good spot on his cock, that sweet spot under the head. Patrick groans wildly and David grins, brightly, sweetly amused.

“Tease,” Patrick hisses, and David beams.

“Uh huh.” 

“God, David, you — fuck, why won’t this _come off,_ ” and something rips, probably the cummerbund, but then Patrick is scrambling onto the bed to kiss him naked as a blue jay and though David mourns the cummerbund, he knows it’s for the best. 

David sinks into the mattress under Patrick’s weight and Patrick shakes his head, hands on David’s waist helping him move further up the bed until they’re closer to the pillows, at the very least. Patrick’s knees bracket David’s hips for just a moment before he rearranges them, pushing David’s knees apart and getting between them. Patrick, on top, holding him down with the weight of his body and the force of his desire, and David can’t help the breathy moan, his nails scraping their own hieroglyphs into the skin of Patrick’s back. 

“Like this?” he whispers, and Patrick’s eyes are wild, on fire.

“Like this,” Patrick growls, and kisses him.

David’s lost to the feeling of Patrick’s mouth on his, Patrick’s fingers digging into his hips and over the swell of his ass, Patrick, consuming him in every way he knows how — every way except the one David wants the most. He realizes he’ll never find a space he loves inhabiting as much as he does the space between one inhale and the next when his lips are pressed to Patrick’s. He could spend all night here, all day, his entire life here, if he could. And God, they try.

They kiss until their mouths are swollen, red, until David’s lips tingle and all he can do is moan, and then Patrick puts his mouth to work elsewhere. He’s learned so much in just a few short days, about how to pleasure David, how to make this good for him. He’s _gorgeous,_ mouth teasing along the line of David’s chest to his tight nipples, sending electricity shooting down David’s body. He mouths along his ribs, up to the hollow of his arm where the hair is thicker, and it feels so good for Patrick to nose, there, to nip and lick until David is shuddering, until his own hips are jerking. His balls are _aching,_ heavy already, they’ve just fucking _started_ but David has never been so powerfully attracted to anyone in his entire life. 

_It’s better, when you love them,_ Stevie had said once, and God, David owes her a thousand apologies. 

Patrick teases him, and touches him, strokes along his neck, then slides down his body, his mouth hot on David’s hip, his belly. He thinks — maybe — but then Patrick bypasses his cock entirely and sucks kisses down the inside of his thigh to his knee. He laughs out loud, thumping his head back against the bed, and he can _feel_ Patrick smiling, _bastard,_ even as his ankle is kissed, his feet caressed. “Need something?” Patrick asks, innocent, and David lifts his head up enough to glare at him. “You, sir, are a tease.”

“Me? A _tease?_ How dare you,” Patrick says, in a passably posh English accent. He grins like the imp he is and kisses his way back up David’s leg, giving special attention to that sensitive place on his inner thigh, and David thinks _finally,_ but then Patrick kisses his way across David’s heaving belly, licking at the streaks of precome David’s left, nosing into his public hair for a moment, before kissing down the other leg.

David is laughing nearly to tears, as Patrick nibbles his ankle bone, and his cock is jerking terribly, and he slaps a hand over his eyes. “I’ve created a monster.”

“Excuse me, I like to think of myself as a connoisseur of all things David,” Patrick says, stroking his instep and sending a jolt of sensation right to the tip of David’s cock. He’s leaking all across his belly, and his skin feels _alive,_ tingling terribly, and suddenly, suddenly, it’s not quite so funny anymore. Suddenly, he needs Patrick, can’t stand another moment without him where he needs to be. His back arches without his say so, and he shudders all over, and Patrick immediately sits back, his mouth swollen and red, his eyes almost nothing but pupil, smallest furrow to his brow. “David?”

“The bottle. I — I need you, Patrick. Please, don’t make me wait anymore.”

Realization dawns on Patrick so quickly, it almost brings a laugh out of David, and that’s something David thinks he would do more of if they had the time — laugh. Blur the lines between the passionate sex and the playful sex and the slow, soulful sex until it was all just _sex_ with Patrick. But he focuses, and swallows the sound, and closes his eyes for the briefest second to focus. He needs to get himself in line if he’s going to make this the kind of experience Patrick can hold close to, one that works itself into spaces between his memories the way he already has with David. 

David hears him pick up the bottle, feels the bed dip under Patrick’s weight as he crawls back towards David. He puts a hand to one of David’s knees and kisses the other, and David forces his eyes open, forces the tears to dry, looks at Patrick and sees him, wanting and soft and a little scared, his eyes focused on the bottle sitting on the sheets next to David’s hip. 

“Hey,” David says, and when Patrick meets his eyes, he smiles. Not a shy or soft thing. He hits Patrick Brewer with the kind of smile he’s seen painted on Patrick’s face all day today, open and bright and _loud,_ a smile that says there isn’t anywhere he’d rather be than right here, right now, doing exactly this. “I trust you.”

And a sound spills out of Patrick that catches David off guard, a deep, groaning sound, and it could be longing and it could be sadness or it could dance along the lines of all those things and before David can find out which one, Patrick’s mouth is back on his, his hands pushing David’s knees open, and David reaches down to hook his hand behind his right knee, pull it up as more of Patrick’s body takes up the space and David starts to squirm. He’s rock hard and aching and he’s starting to feel exposed. 

“Okay. Okay, sweetheart. Tell me what to do.” 

“Open the bottle, Patrick.” He does, and David shivers. “Less is never more, in this situation, so slick up good and then I need you inside me.”

“Inside…God, David.”

“I’m not sure how much He has to do with it, Pat—” David’s retort is cut off when Patrick slides finger inside him, one fluid motion that catches David slightly off-guard in it’s confidence, that stretches him ever so slightly, especially when one of Patrick’s knuckles catches on the ring of muscle when he pulls his finger out, and David can’t bite back the whimper quickly enough. 

“Where — where the hell did you learn that?” David asks, even as he brings a hand down between his legs too, catches Patrick’s wrist. He guides Patrick’s finger back into him, a slow, thick slide, and nothing should feel this good, nothing should have a right to feel like this. 

Patrick is blushing, bright red in the dim light of the lamps, and oh. _Oh._ “By yourself, in your bed?” David whispers, softly, and shudders at the thought, honestly stunned by the image of it. By the thought. “Jesus, Patrick. Did you like it?”

“I do,” Patrick whispers, rubbing gently along the ring of muscle, softening it, expert in this though it’s the first time. “I love how it feels. Full. How it feels deeper inside, that spot.”

Patrick’s fingertip brushes that spot, and his fingers aren’t long but they’re _blunt,_ satisfyingly wide, and David’s back arches again, a groan ripped out of him. 

“You like that?” He’s not asking in that low-throated way that means he already knows the answer; he’s asking because he wants David to tell him the truth. 

“I love that, Patrick, do it again.” And Patrick does, harder this time, the small burn growing into something deeper and warmer. He brushes against David’s prostate again and David’s hips jump off the bed, his eyes narrow like he’s just solved one puzzle but created a new one. He does it again, the crook of his finger that sends David’s hips high and a whine buzzing in his throat. 

When Patrick adds a second finger, and David hisses at the full feeling, Patrick stops and David keens. “Fuck, Patrick, don’t stop, fuck me, please.”

“I have to.”

“No! What? Why? You absolutely don’t have to —”

“David.” There’s enough authority in his voice that David snaps his mouth shut and sits up on an elbow to look at Patrick’s face. He’d been making David feel so good, David hadn’t heard the uptick in his breathing, hadn’t noticed the fingers inside him shaking slightly. Patrick looks like he’s on the edge of breaking down, his brow damp with sweat and his eyes almost manic. David looks down to Patrick’s hands, to the hand that hadn’t just been inside him, and it’s wrapped around Patrick’s cock, holding himself firm at the base, the tip red and swollen and covered in precome. 

For a moment, they hang on the precipice, and then Patrick gasps, “Fuck, I’m going to come,” and a wave of despair comes up over David, but Patrick’s grabbed hold of his balls, tugged them sharply down, and he’s breathing like he’s run across the entirety of Europe to get to him. He groans, low, forehead at David’s knee, and David has never felt so appealing, so needed, that he’d make this beautiful man lose control. 

He wants to live in that feeling, to _preen,_ but he also knows if he wants to get fucked he’s got to move this forward right now. 

“I do _not_ want my fingers to be the only thing inside you tonight,” Patrick hisses, and slips his fingers gently from the clutch of David’s hole. “But David, if that is going to happen, I am not going to be able to keep listening to you make those sounds.” And it’s the hottest, most controlled sentence David has ever heard and it’s a miracle he doesn’t come there just from the want of it all. 

“Fuck me, Patrick,” he demands, furious.

“Yes. How? I mean. Where do you want me?”

Oh, and that’s a question David could answer in a thousand ways, and for a second his mind swims with the scope of possibility, but he needs to see Patrick’s face, needs to watch this happen. 

“Trust me?”

Patrick’s expression breaks, for one long moment. “David. I’ve never trusted anyone nearly as much as I trust you.”

“Good. Back up. Get off the bed.” 

Patrick looks like he’s just suggested a hot coal walk instead, but he listens, standing up and looking down at David expectantly. David follows, grabbing a pillow from the headboard and sliding it under his hips as he arranges himself at the edge of the bed. It’s a good position, for the first time — not fighting the too-soft mattress, putting the control of depth in Patrick’s hands, but it’s also a good position for bottoming out and David… David needs Patrick to bottom out.

He pulls his legs up, wrapping one around Patrick’s backside and pulling him close. He feels Patrick fill the space between his legs, feels the solidity of his hips and the heat of his body, feels the softest pressure from the tip of Patrick’s cock as it lines up against David’s hole.

“Okay,” David says. “The bottle. You need, I mean — there needs to be more. And. Go slow, okay?”

Patrick groans and his chin falls onto his chest, but he leans forward and grabs the bottle, opening it. “You’re so sexy when you start to talk practicalities of sex,” he says, a thin stream of oil falls over the tight ring of muscle, down towards his lower back, over the sensitive skin leading to his balls. He sighs at the feeling, feeling his body already beginning to relax, and Patrick is stroking his cock with the oil, leaving it shiny and wet and God, _God._

“Are you sure i won’t hurt you?” Patrick asks, voice shaking, and David wishes they had fifty years in front of them together, so he could show Patrick all the ways he’d never hurt him.

“Yes, honey,” he says, softly, as Patrick leans over to kiss him, hands bracketed on either side of his head. “Come on, now. Slowly, okay?”

“Slowly,” Patrick groans, and sits up enough to take hold of his cock, and lead himself into David’s body. 

It’s painful, because it always is, in a way David has never been able to describe. He breathes through it, and Patrick is gentle, slow as a glacier, though David knows what it must be costing him. He’s grateful because Patrick is thick, thicker than he’s ever taken, and the sensation is incredible, even as the pain sparks through his hips. 

David has never in his life felt this way during sex. And David, in his estimation has had damn near every kind of sex there is to have — except, apparently, for sex with the first person he’s ever been in love with. But Patrick pushes into him with such care, such tender expectation, that the moan in his chest turns into something closer than a sob, and he buries his face in the soft skin of his bicep lest Patrick think he’s done something wrong.

Patrick stops once he’s pressed all the way in, the two of them breathing together in the quiet dark, the smokey notes of jazz filling the room. David has a steadying hand on Patrick’s hip, and they wait, quiet, for David to grow accustomed to the stretch. For Patrick to kiss him like it’s their last kiss. 

It takes a long time, longer than David expected, but he supposes that’s okay, because there exist two David’s in the world now — the David who’d never had Patrick, and the one who did. He feels brand new, washed clean of so much of his past.

“You can move honey,” he whispers, choked, and Patrick moans.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,” David says, and cradles that beautiful and so-loved face. “Yes, Patrick. Move. Fuck me.”

It doesn’t last as long as some of the other times David’s had, but it doesn’t need to. It’s already bordering on too much as it is, the press of time wrapping around the threads of David’s want, the spark of Patrick’s driving desire, the thudding beat of the universe that reminds them of _now_ and _this_ and _never again._

When Patrick comes shouting David’s name, David forces himself to watch through the tears that stream down his face, memorizes the way Patrick’s eyelids flutter closed against his cheeks and the way he looks when he comes, destroyed, the agony of ecstasy twisting his beautiful features into something feral and gorgeous. David can feel Patrick come inside him, can feel the warmth and fullness that’s so deeply, viscerally satisfying it pings some deeply animalistic part of David’s brain, has him clawing at Patrick’s forearms as he babbles incoherently. 

Patrick falls to his knees and pushes David’s thighs apart, presses his fingers into David’s body and presses his mouth over his cock, and David’s world implodes. 

It takes a long time, a very long time, for him to come back, and he doesn’t want to. God. He doesn’t want to. But Patrick is there, helping him get clean, pulling him under the covers, and when he wraps his arms tight around David’s chest, he lets David bury his face against his throat and doesn’t say a word about the tears David can’t help.

* 

It’s three AM when the phone rings, in the silence of their room. 

David has been woken up by so many late-night phone calls from his family that one might expect his heart not to jolt the way it does anymore. Alexis had called him at 2 AM, begging him to help her and forcing his flight from New York City to get to her as quickly as possible. His mother had called at midnight, when she thought his father was having a heart attack, but just ended up being gas. Even Stevie had called him in the middle of the night, when German occupation was a certainty and she’d needed help getting out of Paris.

Late-night phone calls never heralded anything good, and so for a quiet moment, in that quiet space between waking and dreaming, David pretends it’s not ringing. Pretends it’s not happening. 

And then Patrick shakes him awake. “Phone, David.”

“Phone?”

“Big black thing, useful for long-distance communication, currently ringing.” Middle of the night Patrick is a sassy one, which isn’t unfair given they’d just managed to fall asleep tangled up in each other. 

He doesn’t want to know who’s on the other end of that line. He doesn’t want to hear what they have to say, and he doesn’t want whatever fresh hell is about to be heaped on him. That’s all he’s good for, these days. 

He stands and makes his way groggily to the phone. “‘Lo?” 

“David?”

The last human being he wants to speak to on this planet. “Dad, do you have any idea what time it is?” 

He can hear something in the background, another voice — Dad’s assistant Martie, trying to speak to him. “It’s eleven, are you still in bed?”

“Are you in New York?”

“Of course.” 

“Dad. I am _in France._ Where it is three in the damn morning, so can you please tell me why you called?”

Papers, shuffling in the background. His dad is breathing quickly, sharply, and David feels the pit of his gut clench. _No more._ God, he can’t take more. 

“We’re looking for Eli.” 

“Eli? Why? Or, why are you calling me?”

“Because no one can _find_ him, David. I’ve called, your mother’s called, Clifton’s called — nothing but radio silence.”

“And you thought I’d be the person he was still talking to?”

“You saw him in town this week right?”

“Yeah it was… a few days ago?” The witching-hour fog is still clouding David’s brain, but he’s pretty sure that was this trip. “Actually, call Twyla. She mentioned talking to him this week, too. Something about paperwork for the gallery.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“Ask Eli.” 

“I would, if I could find him!”

“Well, he’s not here!” David pinches the bridge of his nose and takes several deep breaths while he listens to the muffled sounds of his father talking to someone on the other end of the line.

“If you hear from him, will you tell him to call me immediately?”

“Sure.”

“Oh, and David? Do you have cash to hand?”

“Why?” 

“Because there’s some kind of mix up at the bank, you mother and I have had a devil of a time getting access to funds today. Of course, Eli would usually fix all that, but Eli’s not —” 

“— there, no, yeah. I got that. Yes, I’ve got cash, and yes, if I somehow manage to talk to Eli before you do I’ll tell him to call you _and_ the bank? Okay goodbye.” And he hangs up without waiting for a response. 

The bed is still as warm as it was when he left it, and he turns to cuddle up against Patrick’s chest only to find him sitting up against the headboard, his mouth pressed into a thin line, his gaze far away. “Patrick? What’s wrong?”

Patrick starts like he’d forgotten David was in the room, but he opens his arms to him, lets David clumber back into bed and curl up against him. “Oh, nothing. I just. Don’t do well with being woken up in the middle of the night, you know? On the front that, well. It never means anything good.” 

“Well this was nothing. Just my dad, forgetting about silly little things like time changes, and on the hunt for Eli.”

Patrick nods. “Why’s he in such a snit to find Eli?”

“No idea. Some mix up at the bank? Honestly, knowing all of them, Eli’s lost in some English garden with the daughter of one of his junior partners, and they’re all going to have a laugh when they find him in a few days.”

“And if that’s not what happens?” David’s curled into Patrick’s body, Patrick’s hand heavy on David’s shoulder, his thumb working gentle circles into the freckles that dust the top of David’s shoulders. 

“Well then I for one will be thrilled to say goodbye to Eli for good. Sleep now?” David’s voice had been growing increasingly heavy with sleep as he’d laid in Patrick’s arms, his head pressed to Patrick’s chest, listening to the sound of his heartbeat, rocked gently by the steady rise and fall of Patrick’s chest. 

“Sleep now, David. Morning will be here soon.”

“Rude,” David mutters, and Patrick laughs, a gentle breath of a sound.

It takes David a bit to get back to sleep. He keeps thinking he can feel the feather-light press of kisses to the top of his head, and once would swear he hears “I love you,” float into the space between them, but every time he forces his eyes open, Patrick’s are closed and his breathing is steady.

When David does wake, he knows something is wrong before he opens his eyes. It’s a sense of absence behind him, and when he stretches out his arm, he finds bare, cold mattress. His eyes fly open and he strains his ears to hear any faint sound of trickling water, or slowly shifting floorboards, but instead the only thing he hears is the radiator click on. 

He sits up and looks around him and everything is the same. His tuxedo is crumpled at the end of the bed where he’d taken it off last night. His overcoat is still hanging by the door, his billfold still on the dresser next to Patrick’s shaving kit. Only the shaving kit isn’t there, and David knows.

David knows as sure as the little voice in his head that’s never left him. As sure as he’d known the morning he’d woken up to find his name strewn through the headlines, his breakup and heartache with Sebastien an instant Upper East Side folly of legends. As sure as he’d known, sitting in a pitch-black boat in the middle of the North Atlantic, he feels it now — there is no safety net to catch him. He’s on the edge of a great and interminable pain, and it’s not one he can escape, and there will be no making it better. 

He pulls himself out of bed and walks a slow turn of the room, noting already the dozens of small things that David feels an acute loss over — a stray sock of Patrick’s, the hazy bulk of his duffle in the corner, the constant weight of his steady presence, eyes attentive and hands forever trapped in his pockets. The little signs that Patrick had been there at all have completely disappeared — save one.

It’s sitting in the middle of the little table they’d shared dinner over, righted and returned to its original spot in the middle of the sitting area. A cigarette case, in the art nouveau style, an Alfons Mucha if David isn’t mistaken. A woman with long blond hair sits in profile, wearing a wreath of blue cornflowers and a halo in gold leaf. It’s a silver case, unusual for an art nouveau piece, and clearly an antique, for all that it has been lovingly, carefully restored. 

There’s a piece of hotel stationary propped against it, heavy dark handwriting across the middle.

David pulls out a chair and sinks into it, staring at the case and the note for a long, long time. If he doesn’t touch it, none of this will be real, and the night he and Patrick just shared will continue indefinitely. But, that ship has already sailed, and eventually David’s curiosity gets the best of him. He picks up the card and reads, and when he does, he feels something crack in a foundational place inside him, inside a well of hurt so deep even David didn’t know it existed. 

“'Human happiness and moral duty are inseparably connected.’ I have to do this, David. I hope someday you understand, and maybe some day after that even bring yourself to forgive me. I’m sorry. — P”

He crumples the note in his fist and drags himself back to bed, throws the covers over his head, sobs into his pillow so hard he can’t catch his breath and he sees stars. 

And that’s where Alexis finds him an hour later, tears streaming down her face, a telegram from their parents in her hand: the Roses are ruined. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is our longest chapter yet, and our absolutely stunning team of betas managed it in the tightest turn-around. There are truly not enough words of thanks for [TINN](https://archiveofourown.org/users/this_is_not_nothing/profile) and [helvetica](https://archiveofourown.org/users/helvetica_upstart/pseuds/helvetica_upstart), and our sensitivity reader [whetherwoman](https://archiveofourown.org/users/whetherwoman/pseuds/whetherwoman), for all the help and support they've given us every word of the way!


	7. Chapter Seven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a reminder for anyone who may need it -- we wouldn't be doing any of this if there weren't a happy ending waiting at the end of it all <3

The truth about David’s life is this: he’s a fabulously successful gallerist who owns not one but _three_ of the most prestigious art galleries in New York City, accounting for 3% of the paintings sold in the city every year. He hosts magnificent parties attended by some of the biggest names in the world, counted starlets and royalty amongst his closest friends, and regularly flies all over the world in search of new artists to showcase at his gallery.

The truth about David’s life is also this: At his lowest point, twenty-eight and drowning in the dissatisfied miasma of the filthy rich, he’d known that New York City was eating him alive. He was sure that without intervention he’d grow into the aloof, cynical monster that had been sprouting slowly but surely at the center of him, nurtured by a lifetime of regret and exploitation and money and an anger that he couldn’t control or escape. 

He thought for sure there was no way out, that he would become The Loner Gallerist, obsessed with art and the avantgarde, hosting weird performance art shows because it gave all the other dissatisfied rich the opportunity to nod knowingly as if they knew the fucking first thing about art. _You can make a living on the grotesque,_ he can remember reasoning with himself. Young and beautiful and monochrome, slowly becoming more and more obsessed with cleanliness and straight lines and the _correctness_ of the way things should be, and always, _always_ angry, something hot and simmering and building on itself, year after year. 

In the aftermath of Sebastien, when David was bleeding to death, so flayed open it was like he was walking around with his heart and lungs open and out for anyone to see, he had deluded himself into thinking there was a certain romance to hating one’s self. So many artists used pain like this to create works of incredible beauty, right? Sebastian certainly had; all of David’s most private and personal life, thrown across the pages of _Glamour_ without his say-so, the nitty-gritty details of his life sold for profit by a man David had been a fool to trust. He’d comforted himself that so many magazines came out so quickly that his body would be forgotten in a week or two. Harder to forget were the photos in Sebastien’s studio.

Patrick is a man so far removed from Sebastien’s _après moi le déluge_ attitude that David honestly cannot conceive how two human people so different can walk the same earth. Patrick made David feel whole, and safe, and himself for the first time in his life, and he loved David, _he’d said so_ , with his mouth and his hands and his eyes. Patrick was in love with him and David was in love right back, _they were in love with each other_ and it was so much more than David ever thought possible for himself, for that young man shivering under every blanket he owned in his cold, empty high-rise loft. 

The grief inside of him is so big he can’t speak around it, like an apple has lodged in the back of his throat, and he’s crying, the real, chest-deep sobbing that he’s never been able to suppress. He’s still got Patrick’s note clutched in his hand, although Stevie has spent the last twenty minutes trying to ease it out of his hand, to coax his fingers and his shoulders and the muscles in his neck to relax. She’s touching him, softly, too softly, and she’s not saying anything because she knows that he won’t hear it over the blood rushing through his ears. 

Next to the window, Alexis stands with the phone pressed to her ear. David couldn’t bring himself to make the requisite phone calls, wasn’t even able to look at the phone, his mind irrationally locking on to the heavy black enamel as the source for the storm of feelings raging inside him. If the phone had never rang, if he had never gotten up to answer it, Patrick would’ve stayed asleep, wouldn’t have had the opportunity to steal away in the middle of the night and leave David shattered into a million pieces by a bomb, planted while he was sleeping.

“No, I understand that they aren’t flying commercially, this isn’t — look, is James there?” She drums her fingers anxiously against the marble mantle, and the little clicks rattle through David’s brain like a hail of bullets. “No, I don’t need to speak to his wife. Just. Tell him Alexis Rose is calling, he should remember me from last Thanksgiving, I was his son Jimmy’s date? No, I’ll wait.” 

Alexis looks at Stevie and rolls her eyes, mouths an apology, and David presses his face into the mattress. It hurts too much, the soft light peeking through underneath the edges of the curtains. His eyelids feel like they’re coated in sandpaper, and every time he breathes, he feels a knife in his left side press a little deeper. 

He needs to breathe, needs his lungs to remember how to take a deep breath, his heart how to circulate it to the rest of his body, but his heart is shattered and his lungs are frozen and at the core of it all is a cold, small voice reminding him over and over again that he was stupid, he was _so stupid_ to have thought it could end any differently. Patrick could have promised him the world, but the world still follows the march of time, and David’s acidic anger turns inward as he eats another hole inside the fabric of himself, this one shaped like, “you did to yourself, this is your doing, you alone will bear this weight.” 

“Hi, James, good to speak to you! How are you this evening? No, I know it’s late, I’m so sorry to be calling, but. Do you remember when we were talking at Thanksgiving this past year and you slipped too deep into your cups and you told me all those _fascinating_ stories about Jimmy Junior, about the kinds of girls he used to date, and all the tricky little ways you got rid of your little...inconveniences?” She goes on to explain, in as few details as possible, the help they need and how quickly the need it: a flight to New York, and immediately. “Well, of course you can, James! It’s just a little phone call! I’d make it myself, but, well _I’m_ not a Medal of Honor holder. No, no, we’re certainly not in any spot to be fussy about the particulars — although if you could make it for later in the day? It’s not easy to get a tropical bird in a steamer trunk. Oh, thank you James, you’ve certainly done well by the Doolittle name yet again. And tell Jimmy I’ll call him as soon as we’re back stateside, won’t you? Ta.”

She sets the phone down and collapses into one of the wood-backed chairs, her face now wiped of the simpering happy mask she’d just been wearing. She pulls her loose curls back and off her neck, lets her head fall forward onto her chest, her exhale slow and shaky as she lets her hair fall and slowly picks her head back up to look at David. “How is he?”

Stevie reaches out and puts a hand on his shoulder, and David wants to snap at his sister, to remind her that he’s sitting _right here,_ only he’s not sitting, he’s lying down, and he’s lying down because the entire weight of the world is slowly pressing his lungs into his ribs. So he doesn’t snap at her, doesn’t lift his head, just sniffles wetly as a new round of tears drip down his cheeks. He buries his face in the blanket, and Stevie’s hand begins to trace slow, calming circles between his shoulder blades.

He feels the mattress dip as Alexis joins them on the mattress, and he turns his head just enough to see her lay her head on Stevie’s shoulder, to watch as Stevie’s head turns and plants a feather light kiss to her forehead, Alexis’s hand finding Stevie’s and clinging to it tightly. Vague questions float to the top of David’s mind, but then his eyes land on the table again, where the cigarette case is still sitting, and David doesn’t have any more tears in his body. So he closes his eyes, and keens into the pillow, and eventually, he falls asleep. 

*

David wakes to a knock on the door — one of the bellmen, towing a cart behind him — and Stevie and Alexis leave him alone on the bed. Alexis pulls the bellman down the hall after her, while Stevie begins to pack for David, throwing all the things of his that she can find into whatever bag is nearest. It’s going to be hell to unpack when they get to New York, and the realization that they’re going to New York, leaving Paris, leaving this room that’s the entirety of the world he and Patrick created together, it tears through him like a red hot knife. 

“What are you doing,” he croaks from the bed.

“Packing,” she says, and her voice isn’t unkind, but she doesn’t stop moving. “How are you feeling?”

“I’m not. Why are you packing?”

That stops her short. “We have to leave, David.”

“Why?”

“Because...because of Eli? Your mom and dad are on their way back to New York right now, Alexis managed to blackmail us all onto a governmental flight back.”

“I don’t want to go.” 

“You have to go.” 

He’s so tired of doing all the things the world tells him he has to do, and being unable to do the one thing he wants to do with every cell of want in his body. Something like rage claws its way up the back of his throat, and it’s powerful enough he manages to force himself into a seated position. But somehow, just as quickly as the rage strikes through him does the grief resurface, and it _is_ grief, pain he never thought possible, even after Sebastien. Nothing has ever felt like this, never once in his life, and that makes it worse because that’s how he knows it was real. 

“I’m too much,” he gasps, and Stevie stops, turns to him with so much sympathy on her small and perfect face. “He — I was too much. I drove him away.”

“No, David,” Stevie says, though how could she possibly know that? It’s clear, it’s all so clear. He doesn’t know when it all tipped over into _too much_ — Auel’s fitting, the cabaret, dancing together at the speakeasy. The night they shared, the way David had begged Patrick to touch him, to be inside him. Maybe even earlier than that, during the walk at the park. The way David had all but painted a future for them. The way Patrick had almost cried. 

Oh God. Maybe that was the moment. When he couldn’t meet David’s eyes. When he kept looking at the river. David had thought it was pain, a pain he thought they shared, but maybe that was the moment it all became too much, for a man who until three days ago hadn’t wanted to be seen touching him. 

He feels Stevie’s weight come down on the bed beside him, but David’s chest is crumpling inwards, and he clamps a hand over his mouth as the force of his grief robs him of breath. Stevie’s murmuring to him, her eyes red and wet, and he doesn’t know how to tell her, how to explain to her, that he’s not just lost the love of his life. He’s lost a part of him he never knew he had, severed at the joint, that’s left him bleeding to death. 

_You’re a conundrum, David. You’re too much, and yet somehow, also not enough to satisfy my needs,_ Sebastien had said, and God. _God._ Sebastien had been right. He always was, in the end.

To lose Patrick. And then, with the same stroke, to lose everything else.

He’d been a fool, to believe he could be happy. There isn’t happiness in this world for David Rose, only endless grief compounded upon endless grief, a sorrow deep and destroying.

“Shh,” Stevie murmurs, and he’s shaking so hard his teeth are chattering, but she takes his face in her small hands, and forces him to look at her. “David. You need to get up. You need to get dressed. We’re leaving Paris.”

“No,” he says, but Stevie isn’t to be deterred. She takes the blanket from around his shoulders, and pulls him to his feet, and he’s sobbing like a child as she helps him into dark trousers, his loafers, his black sweater with the leather detail on the sleeves. He was going to wear it to take Patrick to the train station. He wanted it to be the last thing Patrick saw him in, one last memory for him. 

“Shh,” Stevie says, picking up his overcoat and pushing his arms through it. “Alexis will be here in a few minutes. I’m going to do one more pass through of the room, then I’m going to mine to pack.”

Oh, oh God. “Please don’t leave me,” he begs, and she squeezes his hands tightly in hers.

“I’m not. I promise, I’m not. We’re going back to New York, okay?”

“I hate New York,” David says, because God, _God_ , he doesn’t want to go back to that cesspool, where no one cared for him, no one loved him.

“I know you do, but I’ll be there, and so will your parents. We’ll figure out what happened, okay?” He can see the worry in her eyes, he can _see it_ , but can do nothing about it. “I promise I’m going to be right next to you, David.”

“I know,” he says, and then Alexis is flying in, her own bellhop making his way down the hall behind her with her pink and white luggage, and Ted. 

“I’ve got him,” she says, and Stevie grabs her by the arm and they murmur at the door, and David should be furious — he hasn’t lost _all_ his faculties — but then he remembers the way Patrick’s mouth curved at him the first morning they woke up together and the pain leaves him breathless. 

He opens his gummy eyes and Alexis is sitting next to him on the edge of the bed, close enough to touch, but not quite. He stares at her and she stares back at him.

“Is Mom okay.”

“No,” Alexis says, and then waves a hand, almost at herself. “I mean, she’s healthy, fine in that respect. But something serious has happened, David, something with Dad and Uncle Eli." 

“He… he’s been sniffing around. He’s been going over my books, asking Twyla for my accounts,” David says, suddenly sure he needs to tell her this. “I don’t know why.”

“Maybe Uncle Eli knew something was happening, he was trying to help us,” Alexis says, eyes big and shining. She looks like the little girl who used to trail after him with her pigtails and her dolls and her wobbling lower lip when she skinned her knee, or when she was lonely, because they were always lonely. David can’t fix this for her, not like he could when she was little, when he’d put a plaster on her knee, or hugged her and assured her Adelina would be done cleaning soon and would tuck her into bed. 

She isn’t that little girl anymore, but David will always be her big brother. He can’t crush her, not even now, not when she’s so scared. 

And then Alexis asks in a small voice, “Did you do something, David?” and he remembers with vicious keenness that he’s the black sheep of his family. 

The rage ignites like a match in gasoline. 

“Did I _do something_?”

“You said — why was Eli looking at your galleries?”

“That doesn’t mean I’ve _done_ something! Eli was _always_ poking around the businesses.” He wasn’t though. Not really. David adds doubt to the hurricane of emotions currently pounding incessantly against his ribcage. “Why would you think I’d have anything to do with this?”

Alexis studies him, and yes, she looks like the little girl, with her big beseeching eyes and her lower lip pouted just a little bit, and he suddenly wants to shake her, to yell at her, to beg her to just fucking _grow up_. He’d been her parent for as long as he could remember and he’s done his best to care for her and do for her, at the expense of his own life. But he can’t. He _can’t_ , right now, because she’s kicking him when he’s down, and it’s suddenly too much, _it’s too much_ , he can’t take this on too.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, David,” she’s saying, but he doesn’t look up from his hands. He can’t. His heart is twisting like a fish in his chest, and his stomach heaves and he scrambles for the toilet. 

It goes on for a long time, longer than he can stand, and Alexis is whispering, “Ew, ew, ew, ew,” even as she rubs his back, even as she kneels up enough to sweep one of the hand-towels off the rack and wet it in the sink. The cool water feels amazing on the back of his neck, and he pulls a wad of toilet paper off the roll, wiping his mouth shakily. “I’m sorry,” she’s saying, fingertips fluttering on his shoulders. “David, I didn’t mean it.”

He leans back against the tile wall and closes his eyes, and Alexis is so close he can smell her perfume, and her hand is still at the back of his neck, holding the cool towel to his skin. 

“He wanted me to smuggle art back to New York.” His face collapses for a second, just a second, before he gets hold of himself again. Doesn’t stop his eyes from flooding with tears. “He wanted me to find buyers for them.”

Alexis turns to him, her eyes enormous. “He _what_?”

“I met him in his office the day after I arrived in Paris. He didn’t say it in so many words, of course, but — he asked me what I knew about the Nazi’s plundering half of Europe, about the art being sold in New York. He wanted me to put him in touch with some of the art dealers I know. I told him I’d think about it, but I wasn’t going to think about it. I’d never do that.” 

She’s staring at him, stunned. “Did you tell Dad?”

David shakes his head, slowly, staring at the bathtub where he and Patrick had stood, just days ago, necking like kids. “Dad stopped listening to me a long time ago.”

“That… that’s not true,” Alexis says, but it sounds like a lie in her mouth. 

“Of course it is. Even if — even if I’d tried. He wouldn’t have listened. He would have taken Eli’s word over mine.” He rolls his head along the wall to look at his sister, kneeling there beside him in her traveling dress, the towel in her hand and her face twisted with bitter pain. “If he hears about it now, he’ll do the same thing.” 

“Oh, David.” 

He shrugs, although each of his shoulders weight a million pounds and he has to fight gravity to do it. “It’s of no consequence now. Everything is...I cocked it all up again. Patrick, the family, all of it.” He knows he should probably wipe his cheeks, can already feel the skin tightening in a thin tiger-stripe pattern as the tear tracks dry, but he can’t be bothered. Everything feels far away and fuzzy and he realizes that for the first time since he opened his eyes and reached out his hand to the empty bed behind him, he feels...quiet. Empty. “What time is it?”

Alexis blinks at him a few times before looking at the clock on the bedside table behind David. “Almost one. Why?" 

Almost twelve hours. It’s been almost twelve hours since his dad had called and lit the fuse on the bomb that had exploded David’s life. “Just wondering. When are we supposed to…” he trails off because his mouth has forgotten how to make the shape of the word ‘leave’.

“James was able to get us three seats on a 4:00 flight. Stevie’s packing and calling the car.” 

“James...Doolittle? I thought you and his son…”

Alexis looks a little sad and waves her hand through the air. “It wasn’t all that, David. You have to break into _one_ ski chalet that accidentally turns out to belong to Paulette Goddard, and the entire world thinks you’re capable of toppling governments or some such thing.”

As infuriating as she is, David’s suddenly viciously glad that his sister is here. He looks at her, at all her impracticality, at all the parts of her hopelessly out of tune with each other, and is thankful that she is the person she is, that she can traipse around the world on the heels of princes and sultans and get herself out of scrapes. He needs someone else to be in control. He needs someone else to have the reins. He can’t right now.

All he sees are years upon years stretching out ahead of him, of terrible and aching loneliness, made unfathomably worse now that he knows what love can be and feels more certain than ever that he’ll be alone. Always alone, never able to forge connections with the people around him, never able to hold on to the people he dared pin his hopes to. Alone in his galleries, selling art to rich bastards who didn’t care a wit for the composition, who just wanted some pretty conversation piece in the grand entrance of their mansion, the front hall of their Manhattan high rise. Something other rich bastards would comment on, or admire, or ask _how much for the Stern._

Patrick had made him feel so safe, had made him feel like there could be something else for him, but Patrick isn’t here anymore. He’s never going to see Patrick again, because Patrick left him. He left him here alone. 

“Oh God,” he gasps, and Alexis wraps her skinny arms around his shoulders as he shudders, as if her tiny frame could hope to push the cold back.

*

The trip to New York passes in flashes, forever burned into his memory, the drab military olives and dull grey cement streets somehow impossibly, assaultingly bright in his grief.

Leaving the Gaston, such a difference from when he left it yesterday, steady on the back of Patrick’s motorbike with his arms wrapped around that thick, muscled waist, smelling Patrick’s aftershave, the leather of his jacket smooth under his hands. Getting to Orly Air Base, and David knows they aren’t allowed to be here, they just _aren’t_ , but Doolittle pulled strings and David thinks they may owe him their lives. The first airman he sees, with his clipboard and his military haircut, and David retreats so deeply into himself that when he surfaces, it’s been hours and they’re over the Atlantic. 

It’s a military flight, the engine under their feet so loud that earplugs are mandatory, and that is his only comfort, that the airmen returning home can’t hear him. They’ve been in battle. They shouldn’t have to hear his grief too, not when they have their own.

He sleeps, though the chill of the cabin is almost unbearable as they cross the Atlantic. Not even his sweater and overcoat are enough. 

Upstate New York, Griffiss Air Force Base. Their father’s limousine, somehow, on the runway to get them and their luggage. He helps Richard, his father’s chauffeur, numb to the heart of him. Alexis and Stevie are speaking to him, but he doesn’t hear a word.

He hates the place he once called home, before boarding school, before college. The Rose family estate sits in the middle of flowers and trees and fountains all lending themselves to the sheer ostentatiousness of the grand hall. His parents’ pride and joy, though they never spent time here, and less so now than when he and Alexis were children. 

David has always hated it, from the echoing wood-paneled halls to the fine antiques at every corner, to the enormous dining room that sat 30 easily, and had on many occasions. The private movie room to show his mother’s pictures to their esteemed guests, and his father’s enormous office, with its meeting table and full bar. The children’s wing, done in pinks and blues, with toy rooms and doll rooms and its own play court, complete with basketball hoops and tennis net. David _hates it_ ; he hated it when he was young, and as a grown man the very sight of the enormous, Grecian-styled pillars of the front of the house fill him with loathing. 

This home is a museum, a showpiece for his mother’s movies and his father’s wealth. There had been no family meals growing up here, no Christmas mornings, no first days of school. There had been Adelina, who he and Alexis called _mama_ until their mother caught on and fired her; there had been Boris, the young gardener David had lost his virginity to at fourteen in the garden shed. There had been drunken nights, and screaming matches between him and his father, and then his father had written him off and sent him to boarding school with the hope it would fix him, and if it couldn’t at least he’d be out of sight. 

He’s an embarrassment, a failure, and broken beyond repair, and has been his entire life. There is nothing in him that can be fixed. 

“I’m sorry,” Alexis says beside him, and David looks at her. The sunlight breaking through the trees plays along her features, setting her hair to gold in the cabin of the limousine. “I know you hate it.”

“This explains so much about the two of you,” Stevie says, staring out the window as the grounds come into view, and they turn onto the tree-lined lane leading to the enormous front entrance. “It’s beautiful." 

“It’s empty. A shell,” David says, as Mary and Gregory come out to greet them, as if they were landed English gentry coming back to the summer home and not the spoiled children of a fading movie actress and a glorified publishing magnate. 

The other servants come to take their luggage. There are some faces David recognizes, but most he doesn’t — his parents had never been able to keep people long. The wig room alone had sent many a lady screaming in fury from this house. 

_Patrick would hate this place_ , David thinks, and then realizes it doesn’t matter what Patrick would like or not, not anymore.

Gregory comes to him, with a gentle, “Young master,” but David could no more swallow the trappings of his life now than he could twelve years ago. It _disgusts_ him. It isn’t Gregory’s fault, because he’s worked for the Rose family for twenty five years and had always been kind even when he had no reason to be, but David couldn’t help associating that gray hair, that wrinkled face, with the worst moments of his life. It isn’t fair, but David’s capacity for kindness is much diminished in this moment. 

“Are my parents here?” he asks.

“Mr. and Mrs. Rose will be arriving tomorrow morning from Los Angeles,” Gregory says, almost apologetically. “We’ve arranged for your stay in the East Wing.”

The wing farthest from his parents’ personal rooms. And why not? The last time he’d spoken to his mother they’d quarreled — the last time he’d spoken to his father had been after the disastrous night in Amsterdam. It was for the best. 

“Great, we love the East Wing,” Stevie says, speaking right over Gregory before he can intervene. She takes her suitcase from him, her shoulder bag. “Well? Lead on, then.”

The house is as god awful as David remembers. It smells of floor polish and wood, leather and old money. The grand staircase looks better suited for a southern plantation and belles in ballgowns, not upstate New York. Gold chandeliers with crystal drops, thick red Persian rugs, oriental vases on antique sideboards, and the awful furniture. Leather chairs so deep it’s impossible to get out of them, and thick, ornamental cherry wood tables. 

Everything about the mansion screams that those who own it are fabulously wealthy and screamingly ostentatious, people who entertain the cream of society and influence elections, who count movie stars as friends and have dined in palaces. 

“Whoa,” Stevie says, eyes enormous, and David, with an abruptness he cannot explain, suddenly cannot take a single moment more of today. 

He sways to a stop, but Stevie is there, looping her arm through his, and Alexis is on his other side, a hand at his shoulder and leading him forward. 

*

He dreams, that night, of Patrick. 

They’re in their barn, brushing down Ellie’s coat. Her tack is waiting beside them, gleaming brown leather lovingly oiled, the saddle blanket made by one of their artisans, and one of the best sellers at the store. Ellie is preening, tail swishing as David brushes her haunches on one side, as Patrick does the other. 

Patrick is talking, he can hear his sweet voice, but David doesn’t understand what he’s saying, as if he’s speaking another language. David knows he should be more concerned than he is, but he feels so warm, so loved, so safe, that it doesn’t matter. Patrick is talking and golden morning light is setting the red in his hair to fire, and he laughs when Ellie stamps her foot, annoyed with them that they’ve stopped tending to her to hold hands over her hips. 

Patrick grins, and squeezes his fingers tightly, and says, “ _Rwy'n dy garu di,”_ and David doesn’t understand but it doesn’t matter at all, because he knows exactly what those soft words mean.

It’s still dark when he opens his eyes, the sun only thinking about coming up over the horizon. He looks past the ornate crown molding and hideous velvet drapes to the view from the window, staring at that fragile line of the lightest blue, where the sky kisses the trees in the far distance. 

He can almost smell the horse, hear the sounds of the brush bristles on her short hair. If he clenches his eyes shut, he can almost hear the way Patrick hummed under his breath as they worked. He can almost feel safe. 

He’s never going to be safe again. He’s been around long enough to know that the kind of love Patrick had given him was rare, and precious, and not easily found. He’s bleeding to death from the loss of it, of something he didn’t know he needed to live. 

Stevie murmurs something behind him and scoots up close, wrapping her tiny arms around him. He gasps against her hold; there isn’t enough oxygen in the world. “Stevie.”

“Shhh,” she’s whispering, pressing her mouth gently to the back of his shoulder, and he’s shaking so hard his body is pulling in, tightening to the center of himself, and then the wave breaks and he’s crying harder than he ever has in his life. It is a terrible, terrible sorrow, not for the love he lost, but for all the years he and Patrick were robbed. Their little house, and their store, and the happiness they’d found in each other. All the could-have-beens, and all the paths he’ll now have to take alone.

He can’t. He can’t. David is fickle, and selfish, and unkind, raised by fickle, selfish, unkind parents and thrust into a world he hated and who hated him back. Somehow, by some miracle, Patrick had seen past that, had seen who he was at the heart of him, and against all odds, against all of their terrible circumstances, Patrick had taken the chance. And David will never know that kind of love ever again, because David destroys everything he touches, even the man who had come closest to being his forever.

The years yawn before him, and for the first time in his adult life David can see himself as he never has. All his faults are laid out before him in stark, terrible clarity, like an impressionist painting redone in the realist style, drawing sharp focus on everything _wrong_ with him. His inability to compromise, his need to be in control. His distaste for his own wealth, even as he lived — like a hypocrite — in its comfort. The deeper, darker things he has never outwardly felt shame about, his dress and his style and his way of speaking, helpless but to be the man he is but knowing, knowing that it had filled his path in life with boulders, had closed doors for him.

Patrick was the love of his life, and he’d only been able to withstand five days with him.

It’s worse. Than with Sebastien. Sebastien hadn’t cared about him in the end, had used David’s money and position and status to sell magazines, to push him forward in his art. Had used all the photos he hadn’t published as a bargaining chip, to keep their extremely messy falling-out out of the papers, to keep David from suing him for libel. Threatening him with his own body, photographed on vulgar display, while he slept. David had thought that the rage he’d felt, the horror and pain, would be the lowest point in his life. 

He was wrong.

Patrick hadn’t said goodbye. He’d left in the middle of the night, left David asleep in their bed, their lovemaking on David’s skin, between his thighs. His fingerprints on David’s hips, on his face.

He’d left and had taken with him their last day together. 

_He took so much more than that,_ something whispers inside. 

“David,” Stevie murmurs, and sits up against the headboard, tugging him into her lap. He curls against her, shaking like a child, but Stevie doesn’t seem to mind. She never has. 

She strokes his hair with gentle, cool fingers, and murmurs to him soft and low, and though David is an open wound the tears slow, his body aching and exhausted. The grief is lodged in his throat, a tangle of burrs that stick into his flesh. It won’t be exorcised by tears, as much as his heart seems to think so. Nothing will ever take this pain from him. A handful of days, and Patrick had destroyed him in a way Sebastien never could.

The sun comes up, as it must, the sky brightening to reds and oranges and yellows. The door of the bedroom opens, and closes again quietly, and he can smell Alexis’s perfume before her weight comes down on the mattress behind him. She strokes her hand gently up and down his arm, fluttering fingertips like she doesn’t know how to offer comfort. If she does, it was learned from David himself, in this drafty, empty shell of a home during their equally empty childhood. “Mom and Dad are here.”

He closes his eyes. _God_. Just the idea of seeing his parents today, when his defenses are so low, fills him with cold dread. His parents didn’t like him much on a good day, and this… this isn’t a good day. They’re going to tear him apart, and he’s going to let them, because David has nothing left to give. 

“Okay,” he says, and lifts himself up from Stevie’s lap, turns from her so she won’t see his face. “I’ll get dressed.” 

Silence from behind him, as he crosses to the dresser, opens the drawer. He dares not look up at the mirror. 

Stevie comes up behind him, touches his back, but he can’t. He can’t. 

“It’s alright,” he says, closing his eyes. “What time do they want us downstairs?”

“As soon as possible,” Alexis says. “David, you don’t — I could talk to them.” 

“No, you can’t,” David says, and opens the door to the ensuite. “But I also don’t know if, um, if I can — that is, would you come with me? When I do?” 

“Of course,” she breathes, and he looks at her, across the room, at her fluttering hands and her face twisted up with worry. “I promise, David.”

He doesn’t tell her that she’s spent her life promising him things she’s never come through on, but he has to hope she’ll keep her word this time. There’s nothing else he can do. 

* 

“David! Alexis! Come in, kids.” Johnny points at the long couch where their mother is already sitting, like he’s welcoming them home for the semi-annual holiday party and not the complete and utter destruction of their world. Their mother is staring off into the middle distance, her golden curls hanging limply and her normally impeccably applied lipstick smeared just below the line of her upper lip. She’s got a long pair of opera gloves grasped limply in one hand as the family lawyer, Robert, paces off to their right, a bright yellow folder open in his hands.

The folder is such a bright, cheery color, it becomes the only thing David can look at. Alexis tugs him forward gently by his sleeve, and he sinks onto the couch cushion furthest from his mother, pressing his body into the arm of the couch and counting the lengths of his exhales, a trick Stevie had taught him once to help deal with a room set spinning by whiskey. It’s not helping now, but he keeps trying, as his father settles in next to him, his sister on the far side, next to his mother.

It strikes David that this may be the longest time they’ve spent stationary, in one room with one another, in the last year. He tries to think back to the last time, but he gets as far as the peeling wallpaper of the Gaston, the way the table had looked pushed aside in a fit of passion, and his stomach twists. He presses the back of his hand to his mouth and draws in a sharp breath which, if his family notices, they don’t bother to mention.

“So,” Robert says as soon as they’re settled. “Looks like we’ve found ourselves in a bit of hot water, eh, Roses?”

“I think you could say that again, Robert,” Johnny says, exasperated, his eyes widening and his head cocking to the side. 

“John,” Moira says, and she sounds pained, although whether at Robert’s opening salvo or John’s tone, none of them can be sure. “Please, let the legal executives escort us through the labyrinthian cavalcade of occurrences that have brought us to these apparently impecunious lows.”

“No ‘apparently’ about it, I’m afraid, Mrs. Rose. Like I tried to tell your husband on the phone before you all, left, I’m afraid that there isn’t much left to be _done_ about any of this.”

“How can that be true,” his mother asks, and she’s looking at Robert with such true confusion in her eyes, she seems to David like a child for the briefest moment. Somewhere beneath the layers of cotton and thorns he’s currently wrapped himself in, he feels another small seed of truth planted in the soil of his soul — none of this will ever be the same, for any of them. 

“Eli,” Robert says matter of fact, sitting down and sitting back to cross one ankle over his knee. “He’s a smart son of a bitch, and until and unless we can find him, your money is gone.”

“Okay, but gone where,” Alexis asks, raising her hand like she’s in school. Robert flips open the folder and pulls out a handful of papers, spreading them on the table in front of the Roses like they make sense, like any of them are going to be able to parse the rows and rows of numbers, the small arrows drawn in blue and black pen between them.

“Part of the problem is that we don’t actually know. In the last few days since Eli dropped off the radar, it’s become pretty clear that whatever he was involved in wasn’t anything good.”

David’s stomach drops, and he can feel the blood in his body slowly turning to ice. It’s slowing down the beat of his heart but making his breath come faster as his skin starts to feel hot and there are little bursts of light when he closes his eyes. 

He can feel it, the constriction of impending confession, that feeling that yet again he’s standing on an edge and the before will be forever different from the after. Only this time, there’s no Patrick on the other side of the divide, no potential of safety, or knowingness, or comfort. Only a barrage of cold, grey rocks with iron tips and razor sides and names like ‘truth’ and ‘fact’ and ‘honesty.’ 

David clears his throat, and then again when still no sound comes out, and he can feel every member of his family turn to look at him, his mother confused, his father apprehensive, Alexis’s face painted with more compassionate concern than David would’ve thought possible. 

“I might know something about that,” are the six most difficult words he’s ever forced himself to say, but once they’re out, he feels like he’s flipped the switch and the next words flow more easily along the current, the next after those even easier, until every word is a pinprick into the softest parts of his stomach, and hands, and the back of his neck, but he’s able to get them out in an order that makes as much sense as he can: Paris, Eli, nosing around about David’s vendors, his successes, the potential avenue for unloading paintings obtained through means so nefarious even Johnny and Moira look visibly horrified when he’s done speaking. 

“Why didn’t—” Johnny clears his throat and lets David keep staring at the scar on his palm from when he’d fallen on a penknife when he was seven, and alone, exploring his father’s office. “Son, why didn’t you call me?”

There’s something in Johnny’s tone that pulls David’s gave from his hands right to his face, to Johnny’s furrowed brow and the blush high on his cheekbones and it knocks against something hollow and empty inside him. “Why would I have?" 

“Because...well. If you were worried, why wouldn’t I be the first call you make?” 

“What happened to ‘trust Uncle Eli, David’ and ‘Eli always knows what he’s doing’? What _exactly_ was I supposed to say? It’s not like I was ever going to take him up on the offer.” He sees the look his family shares, he’s not a blind man. And honestly, it should be a sign to him that it doesn’t hurt as much as he’s bracing for. Not nearly as much as it had to learn that his sister didn’t believe him. That Patrick hadn’t thought him worth staying for. 

He’s spent so much of his life being the family screw up that one more thing shouldn’t matter. But it does. 

_I’m not going to allow you to drag this family’s name through the mud_ , his father had told him, so angry he’d gone calm, his rage kept carefully in check. He’d stared at David from across the behemoth of his wooden desk, to where David was sitting, small and curled into himself. _I’ve worked too hard building our family’s legacy._

It had been crystal clear, what his father had been trying to say, what even David’s drug-addled mind had been able to understand. What he’d threatened to do. 

He finds himself back at that precipice, staring at his father from across miles. Only now, there’s nothing to disinherit him from. 

His dad has leapt to his feet and is crossing the room back and forth in short, sharp strides. “Robert, there must be something we can do. I’ve diversified everything, surely he hasn’t had enough time to take it all out.”

“Over the course of the past year, Eli has been converting all of your stocks, bonds, and investments into liquid assets. You wouldn’t have noticed anything remiss — my partners are going through all of your books now, and everything has been thought of, down to the finest detail. You would have even noticed a little hike in profits in the middle of last year.”

“I thought it was the opening of the new picture lot,” Dad says weakly, swaying to a stop to rub his face.

“Most of your money has been funneled out of the country,” Robert says, not without sympathy. “What’s left… this is very hard to say, Johnny. I’ve worked for your family for many years.” 

Moira sucks in a breath. “No.”

“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Rose, honestly I am. In the next few weeks your family’s possessions will be repossessed. This house, David’s loft in the city, and the family properties in Beverly Hills, Seattle and Honolulu will be seized by the government, including all inside except for clothing and personal items. Please let me be frank. Your family is under investigation by the US Government. Any remaining assets you had have been frozen, and you will not be permitted to return to your places of work.” Robert does look sincerely sorry, even as he speaks the words that will unravel them, unmake them, bring them to their knees. “I’m so sorry, Johnny. But there just. There isn’t anything.”

“ _Anything_ ,” Alexis says in a small voice, although to David she might as well be shouting. He can feel every slow breath rattling through the room, although none of them are his, and he can feel the gold-and-silver mortar holding their family together begin to disintegrate beneath him. He’s spent the first three decades of his life thinking he’d learned to stand on a cracked and broken foundation, and he was just now learning that cracked it had been, now he was being asked to stand on empty air. 

Robert shrugs, and looks around like he’s hoping to find a sudden store of good news nailed to the wall. “Given what David has told us, I’d like to place a few phone calls, see if there are people who might be...interested in this news about Eli, but until and while I’m able to do that,” He flips the folder closed and slides it onto the table and David feels like a final nail has been hammered into his coffin, “Ms. Budd has offered up a place to stay a few hours from you, a small country inn in need of restoring.”

“Ms. Budd?” Johnny looks confused, looking to each of his family members in turn when, and David’s opening his mouth to explain when Alexis cuts him off.

“Stevie?”

He hears his mother sending for her, and sees Alexis’s hands fluttering like little pigeons, anxious and afraid, but David only has eyes for his father. His father, standing at the window of the great room, staring out at the grounds, at the cherry tree orchard that hugs the western edge of the property. If David was brave enough to stand, go to him, he knows he’d be able to see out to the horizon. 

His dad looks broken, and in many respects, it’s David’s fault. He got the ball rolling that ill-timed night in Amsterdam, though maybe even before that — maybe when he purchased his first gallery. Or maybe when he fought so hard to go to art school, after he realized he had no place at Harvard, and was ill-suited for her hallowed halls. Maybe before then, when he realized he didn’t so much like women, or men, but _people_ , and the ways they were built, inside and out. Before he had a name for what he was. Before he had pride. 

His father had always been too trusting, and still David hadn’t said anything. Perhaps it’s irrational, but David’s never known the voices in his head to be such, and so he feels the weight of his truth as it settles in his stomach: this is his doing. His family is here, at the point of ruination, and yet again it’s David’s fault. 

When Stevie slips through the door, he hears her more than sees her. He’s staring at the carpet, the plush, pale blue-and-green whorls, as bright and bouncy as the minute the movers had brought it through the door damn near a decade ago. Then again, he could count on one hand the number of times people had tread across this carpet. Stevie’s peep-toe kitten heels move into his line of sight, and he follows them up the line of her ankles, but looking higher than her knees would require him to lift his head, and. Well. It just feels so heavy on his neck, and so good resting in the cradle of his hands, that he can’t bring himself to do it. 

She pats him a few times on the back of the neck and then spins to sit on the arm of the couch next to him. He doesn’t feel his body leaning, drifting ever closer to Stevie, but suddenly his head is resting on her thigh and her hand has found purchase buried in his tragically unstyled hair. 

“Robert tells us you are to be our saving grace, Ms. Budd,” his mother says, and even in the clouds of grief David can hear the foundation of shrewdness that’s always belied every observation his mother has made. 

“Stephanie,” she corrects gently and then, again, “Stevie, actually. And it won’t be me doing any saving.”

“But Robert —” 

“My aunt. Before the war, before...well, before everything, Aunt Maureen was in a questionable relationship with a questionable financier, who convinced her to spend her family’s fortune on expanding the Gaston into a chain of hotels and inns across the North American continent. Bringing Paris to the masses, he said. She managed to secure two properties, to this effect, before we were able to talk sense into her. She went on to marry the financier, my Uncle Carl, because there were just some things we couldn’t make her see reason about. Both are deceased, now, and all of her properties were bequeathed to me. They’ve just been. Well, ‘rotting away’ seems like it might scare all of you off, but they _have_ been rotting away. I didn’t have the money to fix them up, and that was before the Occupation.”

“And you expect us,” Johnny gestures to the various members of his family, “to stay there?”

Stevie has heard David talk of his family, has listened to him complain time and time again, talk about how horrendous they were. But he doesn’t think the full weight of that has ever been more realized than in this moment. She’s offering them a lifeline, and David’s father is acting like she’s offered them warm egg salad.

“Unless you have somewhere you think might be more appropriate for your current circumstances, Mr. Rose, that’s exactly what I’m suggesting,” Stevie says, though not unkindly. 

His father closes his eyes for long moments, as if in pain. 

“Where… where is this inn?” 

*

David has heard the phrase “nothing but the clothes on his back” before, of course, but he always thought it was a bit of an expression, tantamount to “when pigs fly” or “you win more flies with honey.” But all of that is from the Before Life, and here in the After, he’s learned painfully that sometimes that expression means _exactly_ what it says. 

The rest of the morning with Robert passes in the kind of blur that leaves David feeling like he’s sitting still while the rest of the world spins on quickly without him, faster and faster until another day is half gone and his sister is easing him to his feet. She’s got a sweater in her hands, a pile of cashmere and mohair in flashes of black and white.

They’re in David’s bedroom, and he’s not sure how he got here, but his sister’s hand in still in his and Stevie is behind him, he can tell by the smell of Jasmine and fresh apples that he’s always associated with her, and they’re easing his old sweater up and over his head before smoothing the new one down in his place, and David has made it a habit of only owning soft things, but for some reason this one scrapes like sandpaper. But, it’s a new sweater, not one that went with him to Paris, not one that hid in the bottom of his bags, or confidently in the closet as David tried to forget all the awful things he already knew he was.

Because of that, the sweater is the most comfortable thing he’s worn in weeks, and he pulls the sleeves down and over his fingers. 

From there, David will remember the next few days in cloudy fits and starts, little details that come back to him with a surprising vengeance:

A small, fraying thread on the seat stitching of his father’s Cadillac as Robert drives them all into the Canadian wilderness, the thin edges of the split fiber feathering in the sun. 

The smell of the places they stop along the drive, small rooms that smell of stale air and too many bodies, queen beds separated by plywood drawers stuffed, inexplicably, with _two_ copies of a Bible left by some man named Gideon.

The final, hollow snap of the trunk as the final Rose suitcase is put in the long grass outside their new ‘home,’ a squat clapboard building, the deep red doors and peeling white paint reminding David of blood and shards of bone. 

He needs to sleep, so, so desperately needs to sleep, but he can’t. He hasn’t, slipping in and out of a darkness that isn’t restful, and a silence that isn’t quiet, until he loses track of the hours, the days, the passage of time outside the number of times he rolls over in his bed, his hot cheek pressing heavily into the cool cotton of his pillowcase.

He’s in a hole so deep he doesn’t know how to crawl out of it again. He keeps opening his eyes in the dark, hoping they’ve adjusted, that he’s coming to find new ways to find a foundation in the world since Patrick had robbed him of all sense of gravity. It shouldn’t be like this, voices inside his head — and outside, although Stevie and Alexis both try their hardest not to pressure him to do anything but what he’s already doing — that six days isn’t long enough to build a future, and even if it had been, David had known. Known from the first second he’d slid the waitress and extra bill to deliver Patrick a drink when he wasn’t looking — none of what they had was meant to last. Or, he should have known it, and if he didn’t, that was no fault of Patrick’s.

When David was incredibly young, he’d gone with his mother to the United Nations building — there was talk of a USO tour following the first great war, and his mother had been shortlisted for the star position — and had gotten lost when he’d stopped in the front plaza. His mother had kept on, late for her meeting, and dropped his hand, but David hadn’t noticed. He’d been entranced by the men in long, orange robes, making intricate, flowing circular patterns in colors so bright they didn’t look like they could possibly be real.

Several of the men stood to the side, watching as one final man funneled a thin stream of sand into place using some kind of thing, beaten-silver instrument. David hadn’t been able to peel himself away, and for the first time in his young life he was overwhelmed with the feeling of being impressed by something, of being in awe of the creativity of the human mind. His fingers had twitched with the desire to replicate it, if not the pattern than the feeling, and just has he’d been picturing the sweep of wrist and flex of fingers that would help him do so, the man crouching stood up, stepped back, took one final look at the design, and nodded to one of his compatriots standing off to the side. 

Who stepped forward and proceeded to sweep it all away. 

David’s jaw had dropped, at the sudden riot of color where before there had been order, at the near instantaneous destruction of something so completely stunning. It was such an immediate action it had cracked something open in David as a fundamental truth had been shoved into him with such force it threatened to buckle his knees right there on the slate-grey sidewalk: nothing beautiful is meant to last. 

It’s how he feels now, sinking at last onto familiar black-and-white sheets on an unfamiliar bed in a room that smells like his sister, and his mother, and mothballs and dust, and makes his eyes itch and his skin feel too tight stretched over his bones. The sharp stab of Patrick leaving has morphed into the throbbing shame of having forgotten this most basic lesson, and when at least unconsciousness takes him, the last thing he feels is the lick of regret up the back of his spine, the world’s most slow-moving poison. 

*

To say that the Roses adjust to their new life feels akin to looking at a Five-and-Dime dollhouse and calling it the Taj Mahal. It takes any of them three days before they can manage to leave their new rooms, and even then, only because they’re starving. Stevie has managed to keep them in bottles of Coke and white-bread toast, but anything more than that has been burnt, raw, or some odd combination of the two. 

When Johnny and Alexis manage to foist Moira and David out of the closet and off the bed, respectively, they all wince away from the sunlight like a family of vampires. Neither David nor Alexis miss the laugh that Stevie chokes back as she waits for all of them to make their way down the road, although she has the decency to ignore Moira’s, “oh, a forced perambulation of all the tertiary indignities, I do believe that’s rubbing brine into the laceration, John.”

Luckily, it’s not a far walk down the main thoroughfare to the little diner, across the street from what appears to be some sort of farm vehicle repair shop, and a little general store with a giant SALE sign in the front window. It turns out the place they’re living is less a town, more a pop-up of human architecture loosely gathered as an outpost for farmers not quite looking to go all the way back to Elmdale, the nearest buzzing metropolis. 

The food, once they get to the diner, is mediocre at best, and a sullen, bearded man whose name tag simply says MUTT, glares at them as they pick over turkey sandwiches and soggy apple pie. David doesn’t eat anything, but manages to swallow two whole cups of bitter coffee before his stomach flips and his head feels so heavy he’s got to lean it against the wall of the building. 

He doesn’t remember the walk back to the inn, but the topography of his bedsheets feels familiar enough to be their own type of homecoming. 

The second time the Roses leave their hotel rooms, they’re no longer operating as a unit. It’s no less difficult than the first time, except that it is, and each time after that gets even easier. 

Eventually, a week goes by and Moira doesn’t spend a single night in the closet, although she’s yet to unpack her wigs, leaving them safely in their carrying cases, petting them and whispering their names late into the afternoon. By the end of the second week, Johnny has become set on making lemonade out of their _fantastically_ bitter lemons, and he’s borrowing the diner owner’s truck to make forays into Elmdale, asking around for small jobs he feels in any way capable of doing. Even Alexis manages to find a productive use of her time, assuming a pen name and a quickly thriving gossip column for the local newspaper, who apparently don’t give a whit in either direction about the family’s recent industry ties. Soon, it’s only David, sitting up long enough to take a drink of water, take three bites of whatever food Stevie shoves at him, and roll onto his other side before he sinks back into sleep. It’s just so, so much easier to sleep. 

They’re in town for exactly one month when Stevie marches into his room one morning shortly after Alexis leaves. They’ve managed to expand a bit, David in his own room while Alexis moves into the one adjoining — her idea more than anything, for at least as long as they could get away with it before the inn needed to become financially viable again. David thinks it might have just as much to do with the noises he hears through the thin walls late at night, gentle whispers and soft sighs and louder noises, the kind that start deep in your chest, that flare in him a burning jealousy and longing so intense he keens with it, pressing his fist into his mouth and his face into the pillow while next door his best friend and his sister find a happiness in each other he’d come within a breath of having for himself, once. 

David doesn’t bother to look up when he hears the door between their rooms open, and he’s not surprised to hear Stevie’s voice — even removed from this new world he’s managed to learn it’s rhythms, the schedules other people keep. But what he’s not prepared for is for Stevie to snake her hand under the covers, wrap her thin fingers around his ankle, and pull with a shocking amount of force. And, because he’s not prepared for it, he has no chance to brace against it, and a yelp escapes him as his ass hits the cold, thinly carpeted floor of the room. 

“What the hell, Stevie?”

“Ah, it speaks!” Her legs are wrapped in dark grey canvas, and she's got a flannel wrapped around her waist.

David makes a choked, affronted sound. “Of course I speak! You just _yanked_ me out of my bed!”

“And I would have done it a week ago if your sister hadn’t convinced me you just needed a few more days to wallow.”

“I’m not wallowing.” She crosses her arms and raises an eyebrow and it’s in moments like this he hates how well she knows him. “Fine! Maybe I’m...sequestering myself in a moment of grief.”

“You really are your mother's son.”

“What have I done to hurt you, that you would first pull me out of my bed and secondly say that to me right now?”

“I’m not the one who’s hurt here, David.” 

And just like that David slips out of the stream of banter and back into the slow, thick river of dark that’s filled him from diaphragm to sternum for the past month. He shrugs, and chews on the edge of his thumb, picks at the ragged skin around his cuticles. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Stevie nods. “I know. That’s why we’re not going to talk.”

“So, you pulled me out of my bed to...have a staring contest?”

“Ha.” She reaches behind her and grabs a bundle off the top of the dresser, tossing them at his feet. David sees thin, tan cotton slacks and a light green short sleeved polo and David’s looking at them like he doesn’t remember what clothes are. “We’re not going to talk, because we’re going on a walk. 

“A walk.”

“Hike, to be more precise." 

“A hike?”

“Yes, David. Recreational movement high in the mountains. Well. Not high. There’s a local lookout the guy at the diner told me about. It’s called...Cobra something? Or Copperhead? Rattlesnake, maybe?” She shrugs, like she hasn’t just named three deadly snakes. “Anyway, he says it's an easy walk up the old trapping trail.”

David holds up a hand and sounds more like himself than he has in weeks. “What about _anything_ in the sentence you just said made you stop and think ‘I know! This will be good for David’.” 

“The part where you’ve been helping me since I was seventeen, David. You saved my life, during the war, and I think it’s time I return the favor.” 

“And taking a hike to Killer Snake Mountain is going to save my life?”

Stevie pauses to consider him, and then nods once, resolutely. “Yes. I think it just might.”

That’s how David finds himself in clothing Stevie has deemed appropriate for hiking, which David would not be caught dead in otherwise, staring at the cheerful wooden sign put up by hopeful park rangers, inviting hikers to take the walk up to Rattlesnake Point. David is not an outdoorsman by any stretch of the imagination, as evidenced by any number of his horrendous forays into nature, up to and including his disastrous trip with Edward R Murrow to Panama Canal. He can’t deny how beautiful it is, though, or how peaceful, even if the thought of a hike _anywhere_ is enough to make him sweat preemptively. 

“You kids be careful,” Dad says, from the window of the truck, and David hasn’t been able to look his father in the eye for months now, so it’s Stevie who says, “We will, Mr. Rose. We’ll see you later this afternoon.”

“I’ll be back to pick you up at three,” Dad says. It seems as if he wants to say more, but in the end the truck rattles on its way down the road, and David stares at the tree line as hard as he can, until his eyes stop burning.

Stevie steps up beside him, looking quite the nature girl in gray canvas trousers and a mountaineering bucket cap to keep the sun off of her sensitive skin. She hands him a rucksack, with a blanket rolled and tied to the bottom of the bag, and he takes it from her, looping it over his shoulders as she pulls her own on. “Ready?”

“No,” he says faintly, but she heads up the trail and David keeps pace.

It’s pretty, for being an unmanicured wilderness, and he can almost get past how odd it is to find himself in this moment in time. How odd it is to be trailing Stevie, who in his mind’s eye is somehow forever a part of the Gaston, past shrubs and bushes and into the tree line, the trail cheerfully leading them in. How bizarre it is to look down and see hiking boots on his feet, though he remembers buying them some years ago, and how strange it feels not to be constantly worried about the galleries, though he’d never truly had cause to. His family has been lifted out of their pretty little world and parked in the middle of the wilds of Canada, safe while the federal government hunts for Eli.

 _Patrick would love it here,_ he thinks, a pang of fire in his chest that burns the base of his throat. David has no true appreciation for it beyond the aesthetic — can’t name any flowers or trees, can’t talk with any kind of intelligence about the ecosystem. He can’t name many of the creatures scampering in the undergrowth beyond their most basic — deer, squirrel, rabbits. He can almost see Patrick here with them, walking stick in hand, pointing out birds in the trees, talking about the pretty yellow flowers that line the trail in some parts, the fruiting bushes ripe with berries. 

The tears come on him, and he stops in the middle of the trail. Stevie’s voice tapers off, and she comes back down the small incline to him, sighing. “David.” 

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” she says, commanding and bossy and he loves her so very, very much. With softer words, a gentler voice, she tells him, “I’ve never seen you like this before.”

“Yes, you have,” David says, angry with himself even as he wipes the tears off on his cardigan, black with red piping, and horrifically mismatched to the rest of his outfit. He hates it, and hates these clothes, and hates this moment in time because it’s peaceful and he doesn’t _want_ to be peaceful. He wants to be aloof, to be angry, to be snide, but all his aloof, angry, snide bits are gone as if they never were. “With Sebastien.” 

“No. With Sebastien you were murderous,” Stevie says, and true, he was, “and devastated. But it’s different now.”

“I fell in love with him,” David says, helpless, as the salt burns a line down his cheeks. “For a minute, I thought this was it. That I’d never… we’d find each other, after the war. I was going to wait for him. And yes, before you say it, I realize it makes me sound like a Victorian bride waiting for her lost love in a lighthouse or something,” and his legs leave him and he sits suddenly, there on the trail, and the birds are singing and the wind is rustling cheerfully through the trees and he has never felt such abject misery in his life. “I was going to tell him. Our last day. I was going to come back to New York and wait for him. We had a plan for what we wanted. What we could have. I was going to ask him to come back to me. And if he’d said no, it would — it would have been better than this. I scared him. I was too much, and I scared him.”

Stevie sits cross-legged next to him and he digs his fingers into the grassy roots, fisting his fingers into the earth to keep himself from collapsing. “You weren’t too much. Do you remember that first night we saw him at the Salome?”

“How can I forget?”

“Do you remember what you said?” 

He shakes his head. “That he was gorgeous.” 

“Yes, you said that. You also said it was a bad idea.” 

“It _was_. He’s a GI.”

“He’s a GI,” Stevie murmurs, and very gently untangles his fingers from the poor roots he’s murdering. She looks as if she’s struggling with herself for a moment, but only for a moment. When she meets his eyes, she gently laces their fingers together and sets them in her lap. “The papers keep saying the war is as good as won, but you know and I know that the outright fighting will stop but everything else will continue. Patrick… as much as I hate saying this, because I hate _him_ for what he did to you, Patrick didn’t leave you because he wanted to. I think he left in the middle of the night because he knew he wouldn’t be strong enough to say no. If you’d asked him to stay, David, he would have.” 

It’s worse to hear those words. It’s infinitely, catastrophically worse, because he knows she’s right. 

He makes a horrible, horrible sound, can’t even recognize it as his own voice, and Stevie gathers him close.

They sit there, on the trail, for a long time. David doesn't quite know how long, only that by the time he’s ready to keep going his limbs feel like lead, and he has to convince his body to keep moving. 

Eventually the path thins and starts to break over craggy rock, and then they’re there, at Rattlesnake Point. The view is breathtaking, overlooking the tiny gathering of buildings not quite a town, the glittering jewel of the creek snaking its way through, and the mountains in the distance. It’s immensely peaceful and Stevie doesn’t try to fill the quiet with unnecessary conversation, just laying out their blankets, taking out their lunch from their rucksacks, sandwiches and thermoses of coffee, and the cigarette case Patrick gave him. 

There aren’t jazz cigarettes in it, because that’s an expense he can no longer afford, but very good tobacco, hand-rolled by Stevie herself — he’d recognize the paperwork anywhere. He plucks one out and snaps it shut, running his thumb across the woman inlaid on the front, her sharp profile, the fall of her gown like water even on the metal. He passes it to Stevie, and she gives him a small smile as she takes it. 

“This is beautiful,” she says, and David nods. 

“It was his. He bought it the day we went to Bougival. I remember seeing it in the junk shop,” David says quietly, swallowing against the lump in his throat. “I think he bought it for me.”

“Clearly,” Stevie says, passing her small fingers over the inlaid blue flowers. “I can see how it would remind him of you.”

“Are you saying I’m a wispy blonde gazing forlornly into the distance?” 

“Of course I am. I’m also saying that it’s classic, chic, beautiful.” 

The compliment lands hard, and he snorts. “Seriously?”

“Well, not right _now_. Right now you haven’t had a haircut in a while and you’ve gone from ‘artful stubble’ to ‘scraggly wildman’, and let's not talk about the fact that you haven’t worn anything other than pajamas since we got here,” Stevie says, merciless but kind. “But normally. When you’re yourself. You’ve always been beautiful, David.” 

He shakes his head again, glancing her way. “Compliments aren’t going to get you anywhere, Stephanie Marie.”

“I think you’ll find that they get you everywhere, David Samuel,” Stevie replies. He can see her studying the numbers on the back of the case, something newer than the case, engraved into the thin metal with a heavy-handed bevel. “What are the numbers?”

He has no idea. They’ve taunted him, _N44.3381_ and _W77.0416,_ though he wonders if perhaps they’re manufacturing numbers of some kind, like pottery marks or manufacturing symbols on bronze. Maybe this is the equivalent. “It came from a junk shop,” he says finally. “Whoever owned it before, I guess. Or whoever made it.”

“They’re big,” Stevie says, thoughtful, but turns the case back around and hands it back to him, one of the cigarettes in hand. She lights it carefully, hand cupped around the red tip. “Eat your sandwich and look at the pretty view.”

“How long are we supposed to look?” David asks, unwrapping his chicken salad sandwich.

“For as long as it takes,” Stevie says, but declines to tell him _for what_. 

*

The day after their first hike, David is so exhausted, he laughs in Stevie's face when she comes into his room at the same early morning hour, same sturdy boots on her feet, another ridiculous outdoor outfit for David tucked under her arm. But as soon as he's done laughing, she throws the pile of cotton and linen onto his face and he sits up, begrudgingly. 

The second day after, he’s already bracing to hear the door open, squeezing his eyes shut and forcing his breaths to lengthen, like he’s convinced if he can pretend to be asleep, he’ll actually _be_ asleep. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work for him any better this time than it has in the past, and he throws off the cover before Stevie has a chance to assault him in some way. 

And this is how it becomes their routine, for Stevie to meet him in his room, hand him an outfit he wouldn’t be caught dead in except outside this specific and absolutely dire circumstance, and link arms with her as they trudge up the side of a mountain. By the end of the first week, he doesn’t hate it anymore, and by the end of the second David begins to find comfort in the first steps off the paved road and onto the packed-dirt hiking trail — not that David would never admit that to anyone but the one person he’ll never be able to tell. 

They make it half way their third week of daily hikes before David wakes at dawn to the sound of thunder and pulls the blankets back up to his chin, tiny smile floating across his lips and muscles already relaxing into the mattress at the anticipation of a morning lie-in. Of course, Stevie apparently doesn’t get that memo, and she opens the door at the exact same time she normally would. And the fact that David doesn’t get even this single moment of extra rest is offset only by the fact that she’s borrowed the truck, and is able to drive them directly to the diner, where she plunks him down in a booth and buys him a stack of pancakes and a side of hot, garlicky homestyle potatoes. 

“It’s not that I don’t appreciate the feeding,” he says, waving his fork above the myriad of plates arrayed across the top of the table, “but can I ask why we still had to be here _now_? Last I checked, Mutt would have made us pancakes in another two hours.”

“Routines are important, David,” and she rolls her eyes as she bites into a piece of bacon with a snap. David sits back and takes a long drink of coffee, for the first time looking at Stevie to really _see_ her. He hasn’t done that much, with any of them, since...everything, and the closer he looked the more startled he was to see just how much had changed in his best friend already. 

Her cheeks were leaner, her eyes darker, but there was a new kind of ease in the way her body moved through space, in the way she tucked her hair behind her ear and leaned across the table to spear a bite of his pancakes, dragging it through the syrup and making a drippy mess as she sat back to take a bite. 

“You look happy.”

“I am happy.”

“How is that possible?” And it’s not that David is unaware of the ways in which Stevie _isn’t_ family — how instrumental she’s been in providing them all a refuge, and the fact that she’s sleeping with his sister are two primary places he’d start — but he’s also spent years thinking of her as the best friend he’s ever had, or ever will have, and he doesn’t understand how his partner in crime, fellow elbow-rubber, former consumer of brüt and caviar, can already look so at home in a life that’s so different. 

Stevie shrugs and studies him, opening and closing her mouth a few times before leaning forward on her elbows. “I think maybe it’s different for me. Not just because of the money, although obviously because of the money, but. You weren’t there, David. When the city fell, when the streets opened up to the tanks and the cheering in the street…well, it ended up sounding more like screams by the time the day was done.” 

“I didn’t think you were there.”

“I wasn’t. Not for long — my aunt saw to that. But I was there on the first day, and maybe it’s not fair, but the shine comes off the diamond when you’ve watched it dragged through the shit. I’m always going to love Paris, and New York, but there’s something...something _fresh_ about being here. Don’t you feel it?”

He did. It was hard not to, surrounded as they were by fields and trees and even a tiny creek that actually honest-to-god _babbled_. But David still woke up every day feeling like he was Dorothy, stuck in the monochrome of Kansas, while the rest of his family had already started to move into the technicolor land of Oz. “I’m happy you’re happy,” he says around another drink of coffee.

“I’m happy you’re out of bed,” she replies. “There was a minute there I didn’t think we’d get you back.” 

“I don’t know if I am back,” David says, his voice small, but he puts another bite of pancake in his mouth, and follows it with a bite of bacon, and he feels full and warm and for the first time in a long time like he could actually _rest,_ not just slip into a darkness that passed the time and blurred the days together. “But I appreciate the effort.”

Stevie shifts in her seat, looking over her shoulder, cutting a glance at Mutt’s back where he’s refilling the coffee pot, craning her neck towards the door like she’s looking for someone. But the only other couple in the room is an older man in a black leather jacket and the woman across from him, her sunglasses dark and leopard print silk scarf tied around her neck, so when she’s convinced Mutt’s otherwise occupied and distracted enough to not be listening, she looks at David with something in her eyes that he’s seen before, a kind of sad secrecy that usually means whatever she’s about to tell him he’s going to want to hear, but isn’t necessarily going to like. 

“So, I promised Alexis I wouldn’t show you this, and I know you’ve sworn off the press after everything,” she pulls a square of newsprint out of the back pocket of the overalls she’s currently wearing and smooths it out, turning it around and sliding it across the table to David. “But I also don’t think I’d be able to live with myself if I didn’t tell you. I don’t know if it changes anything or not, but. Maybe now you’ll have a choice, where you didn’t before.”

He doesn’t want to look. He hasn’t wanted to lay eyes on a single piece of newsprint since his family’s name was splashed across the headlines a _second_ time, his fault again, but the headline is too big, too bold, and once he’s seen it he’s pulling the paper across the pitted formica and leaning forward on his elbows to take in all the details.

**HISTORY RETURNED: STOLEN ART SMUGGLING RING DISCOVERED; DISMANTLED**

And there it is. The story David already knows, because he lived it. Or, lived a part of it. He sees names listed, paintings he’s heard whispers of, the ghosts of artwork disappeared and the tragedy of the families that lost them: death, destruction, loss. It’s a tale of suffering, and of a specific and shocking kind of evil, but there’s also the story David doesn’t know. Groups of American and Canadian soldiers, deep behind enemy lines, facing danger outside knowable depths, for ideas as shifting and cerebral as ‘art’ and ‘beauty’ and the legacy of humankind. 

He sees Eli’s name among those still evading capture, and his family’s name mentioned in passing relation to a number of potential American ties recently cleared of all wrongdoing. And, even though he should expect it, has a feeling he knows what's coming from the moment his eyes scan the first word of the article, he’s still not prepared for the way it stops his heart, the way his skin flashes hot and ice fills his joints as he sees the name in print, next to those responsible for the investigation, the capture, the return of justice and goodness to this corner of the world: Patrick Brewer, Captain in her Majesty’s Royal Canadian Army.

David looks up, past Stevie, past the people and the food and the awful wallpaper and hideous decor, to the glass windows at the front of the cafe. The sun has broken through the summer storm clouds, bright as fire, and David lets it blur, lets the light burn in his eyes. 

He stands up. Stevie’s speaking, but David shakes his head, once. 

“I can’t...I need,” he hears himself say, from far away.

“David.”

But he can’t. He can’t. “I have to go.”

It’s so hot outside. Summer had come with a vengeance, and the heat is insistent, prickling the back of his neck, the tip of his nose. The air is humid, and heavy, and he feels it pressing into the tops of his shoulders like a lead blanket. It smells like manure and vegetation and heat, and for the first time since coming here, to this godforsaken place, David realizes that he’s never going to leave. There’s no way out.

David folds his arms in tightly, picking a direction and walking towards it. He passes the abandoned general store, the farm equipment mechanic, the abandoned church the locals called Town Hall though this wasn’t actually a town, and the new church on the hill, with gleaming white clapboard and a shining bronze bell in the belfry. He keeps walking until there isn’t anything else to see, and that’s when he sits down on the side of the road and think this, of all the moments, may be the lowest he’s ever felt in his life. 

It is one thing to feel like you are too much, unmade and unfit for the boxes the world creates, the ones that people call “family” or “love” or “trust”. 

It is one thing to feel left, to wake up alone and know that there is only one person where there are supposed to be two. 

It is an entirely different thing to find out you are _not enough_ , that you have opened yourself up, have laid bare your faults and flaws and the places you feel you lack, or overflow into the excessive, to have all of that be seen and be told: _I choose something else._

Patrick had told him on their second night: the loyalty you feel to your country and the loyalty you feel to your lover shouldn’t spring from the same place. At the time, David hadn’t dared to think that sentiment would ever need apply to him, and all the more foolish for it, because Patrick had never once lied to him. David had heard what he’d wanted to hear, and the rest had fallen along the wayside, and yet _again_ he’s made his own undoing and has no one else to blame. 

How much had Patrick known? When had he known it? David’s made a life of reading people, and never once felt like he was being used, and Patrick doesn’t strike him as the man to take advantage, but. He’d also taken Patrick as the kind of man to say goodbye, and he’d been so, so grievously wrong in that assumption, so who’s to say. And the thought that Patrick knew, knew from the moment David Rose whispered his name into the chilled air of a French spring morning, knew and spent the next four days knowing, and saying nothing, is enough to take him from sitting to lying down in the short grass on the side of the road.

Small pebbles press into his palm and he fights back the waves of regret, of anger, the incessant voice that has begun a chorus of _‘none of this would have happened, he could have stopped it, you could have stopped it, he didn’t say a word’_ that has David pressing his palms into his eyes until he sees stars. He hates it, the way he can feel a bright, burning anger lick across the edges of his memories, recoloring his time with Patrick until he’s rehearing every word passed between them, searching for the moment when he could have known — would have known, if he hadn’t been so completely enamored by Captain Patrick Brewer. 

That’s where Stevie and Alexis find him a few hours later, head pillowed on his arms and his tears make a slowly growing damp spot in the dirt. They get him to his feet, and back to his bed.

The next morning, Stevie pulls him out of bed again, but this time, he wraps the blanket tighter, turns his back to her, and spends the rest of the afternoon on the floor.

There are no more morning hikes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another chapter, another chance to thank our absolutely stunning beta team, [TINN](https://archiveofourown.org/users/this_is_not_nothing/profile) and [helvetica](https://archiveofourown.org/users/helvetica_upstart/pseuds/helvetica_upstart), and our sensitivity reader [whetherwoman](https://archiveofourown.org/users/whetherwoman/pseuds/whetherwoman). Literally, we would not be here without their help and constant support.


	8. Chapter Eight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> howdy, friends. welcome to chapter eight and Di and I both hope this chapter finds you taking care of yourself as best you can in the on-fire world we're living in. We want to say, because of everything that's going on and the militaristic nature of this chapter, that Di and I believe that black lives matter, that veterans are severely underserved in their mental health treatment, and that the systemic issues of inequality in our country are a massive part of what's underlying the rage, frustration, and protest in the world right now. As two authors writing in a fandom that's about what happens when love is allowed to win, first and foremost, we're using this time to watch, to listen to artists and activists of color, and to learn.
> 
> At the end of the fic, in addition to the citations we used to help us write the actual chapter, Di and I have also linked to resources for giving back to and supporting black lives matter and other social justice and neighborhood organization projects, as well as to resources specific to veteran's mental health. 
> 
> We also just want to give you guys a quick warning/reminder to check your tags, and to know that this is the most militarily 'realistic' chapter in terms of violence and the mention of war crimes, so please friends, _take care of yourselves_  
>  be safe, friends, and happy pride <3

_“Sleep now?”_

_“Sleep now, David. Morning will be here soon.”_

Patrick pulls David a fraction of an inch closer to his body and feels the racing of his heart like a hummingbird in his chest. Every slam against his ribcage screams a single word at him, sharp as an icepick and slowly dismantling every shred of peace he and David had built over their time at Le Lido: _Eli._

He can feel Eli’s presence slither into all the molecules of space between him and David, making his stomach turn and bile rise to the back of his throat. Of course, he didn’t _really_ know anything, only the side of the conversation he overheard, the sparse bits and pieces David had told him, but at the same time — doesn’t he actually know everything? Or, at least, he knows more. More than David does, and with the power and resources to find out the things David doesn’t know. He’d heard David mention pocket money, and bank trouble, and already he hated that his mind was slipping out of the warm comfort of David’s embrace and into the cold, calculating mental space that has kept him alive all these years. 

He slips out of the bed, pressing a soft kiss to David’s temple and trying not to yelp at the cold air that hits his skin. David stirs in the bed, and Patrick digs to the bottom of his duffle bag, rooting around until he feels the familiar hard edge of a manila folder, and he pulls the sheaf of papers out of his bag. He sinks onto the edge of the mattress and flips the folder open, squinting at the typeset in the grey, hazy moonlight through the sheer curtains. He’s not really reading it, because there’s not going to be anything there that wasn’t the last time he’d read it yesterday morning, but that doesn’t stop the foolish spark of hope in his chest. Maybe he missed something, skimmed past the exact sentence he needs to slot the last pieces of the puzzle together.

But Patrick Brewer has never been a skimmer, didn’t become a captain and a cryptographer by skipping past the smallest details that make life real, and he knew well before he got to the last page that he hadn’t missed anything. There was no magic bullet, no explanation for why the operation would’ve launched now, why the universe would’ve chosen this moment in time to set in motion the one course of events that could pull him away from the warmth and gentle weight of David’s arm around his waist. 

But this isn’t — can’t be — just anything. Not if the Army has decided that now is the time to act, and he’s out of bed and has one leg all the way into his military-issued travel greens before something in his brain short circuits and he sits back down, one leg of his pants hanging loosely next to his thigh, and reaches out to bury his hand in David’s hair. 

He can’t leave. He’s never in his life had a series of experiences that have cracked him open and made him whole all at the same time. His life has come into shocking clarity with David, the way it does in the bright, phosphorescent glow of mortar fire, in the seconds in between a bullet striking flesh and pain blooming bright and hot in the brain. The way it had when he’d seen The Rose turn and bare herself for the world in an act of both sensuality and bravery. He knows what he wants, and who he wants, and it's simultaneously the surest he’s ever felt and the most frightened he’s ever been — and Patrick has built his career, his adult identity, on a foundation secured with a mortar of fear. 

And that’s why he knows he can’t stay.

If he stays, he faces the choice of telling David what he knows — and what he doesn’t — and risk making David feel betrayed and used like all the foolish bastards who had come before him, or not telling David while he waits for the other shoe to drop and potential ruin David in a way even Patrick won’t be able to fix. Unless he leaves. He won’t be able to fix it unless he leaves. 

He stands, and finishes putting on his pants, reaching into his pack again to grab the shirt laying on top. He’s prepared his clothes already, planning to save precious moments in the morning to spend standing with his back pressed to David’s chest and David’s arms draped around his shoulders like a blanket. Instead, the preparation has sped him towards the moment he’ll have to say goodbye to David. 

He heads into the bathroom and closes the door softly behind him. He flips the light on and quickly brushes his teeth, his hair, splashes water on his face. He does his best to avoid looking at himself in the mirror, as the minutes tick by and the solidity of what he has to do settles into his stomach, into the sole of his feet and the pockets of his heart he’d just been beginning to open for David. 

God, he wants to stay. He wants to stay so badly it makes him feel sick, but not nearly as sick as facing the alternative: what happens if he stays. Who continues to walk free if he stays. Suddenly, the entire existence of the combined Canadian and American forces flees his mind as his desire to keep David safe overwhelms his need to stay. When he’s done, he leaves the light on and the door cracked behind him so that he can see enough to pack his duffle.

David makes a noise, quiet and low, from the bed, and Patrick stills, watching him.

It strikes him, all over again, just how beautiful David is. Miles of naked, freckled back, the ruffle of his sleep-mussed hair, his dark lashes and the line of his stubbled jaw. He so peaceful, when just a few short hours ago he’d been red-faced, sweating, begging Patrick to _go harder, please, fuck me harder,_ like he could hide the tears tracking down his temples, the shake of his hands, the way his voice shuddered. Like he could hide his heart from Patrick, when they’d spent the last five days sharing it. 

His knees bump the bed and he realizes he’s been walking towards David without really meaning to. He digs his teeth into his lip and sits down, leaning against the headboard and letting the weight of his head press into the curves of the carving. It hurts, and it helps him focus. Next to him, he can feel David shift, and everything in Patrick’s body wills David to open his eyes.

He knows, as the seconds tick by, that he’s never going to regret anything as much as he does this, the passing of a time he’ll never be able to get back, while David keeps his eyes closed and Patrick doesn’t move to wake him. Because he knows if he _does_ see David’s eyes, he’s going to have to hear David’s voice, and if he hears David’s voice, he’s never going to get out of this bed again. 

Patrick Brewer is a soldier and a leader and has held men’s lives in his hands. And in this moment, he slows his breath and closes his eyes and lets the moment pass because he is a coward. He is a coward, and even in the slowly smoldering urge he feels to protect David at costs far greater than he ever would have thought, he cannot do that and tell David the truth at the same time. So, he sits, and he waits, and when David turns his back to Patrick again, he counts out thirty agonizing seconds before he stands and finishes getting ready.

At the bottom of his rucksack is the gift he’d bought for David just a few short days ago. A lifetime ago. The cigarette case is even more beautiful, now that it’s been professionally cleaned. The cornflowers sparkle even in the dark light, the woman’s halo a golden sheen. Patrick imagines the metal warm against David’s thigh, in his pocket. 

He turns the case over, and presses his lips against the coordinates he’d had engraved. The coordinates for home.

He does the same to David’s temple, his cheek, the peak of his shoulder and his bicep, letting himself taste the salt of David’s skin, letting himself smell David’s cologne, his hair pomade, his sweat. The lump in Patrick’s throat almost chokes him, and his chin shakes. He has to take three deep breaths to steady his hand, has to blink the tears out his eyes several times before he can see clearly enough to write his good-bye to David. The pen hangs in the air over the paper and he has no idea what he wants to write, or rather, doesn’t know how to write _please don’t hate me_ in a way that will make it true. There’s not enough room to explain, not enough time to write it all out, so he reaches for the only thing he still knows to be true with everything inside him, one of the things his grandpa had said so many times to Patrick growing up that he occasionally _did_ wake up saying it in his sleep: 

_Human happiness and moral duty are inseparably connected._

David’s happiness, his moral duty. He adds his apologies, chokes back a sob as he begs future David to find a way to forgive him. He props the note against the cigarette case on top of the same table where not two days ago he’d sat and realized he’d never felt about another human the way he feels about David Rose. He swipes his hand across the tears burning a path down his cheeks. “This isn’t the end,” he whispers, the heat in his eyes burning. “I promise, David.” 

And then Patrick puts on Captain Brewer like last year’s winter shoes, and steps back out into the world. 

*

Patrick has been attached to the 10th Medium Regiment, Royal Artillery for the past three years. The regiment bore little resemblance to what it looked like when first enabled in ‘42, before multiple engagements at the front, and multiple casualties, had brought home the realities of war. Patrick is one of only a handful of officers who’d made it to this point, who’d survived Normandy, and Dieppe, and the push of the Front into Northern France. To be reassigned now, at the eleventh hour, and to know that the final push into Germany was being taken away from him, _that he wasn’t going to see this through,_ had so infuriated him that Patrick had almost taken a swing at his commanding officer. It was only Colonel Travis’s quiet, “Calm down, lad,” that had kept him from a dishonorable discharge. 

It was why he’d been given R&R. To make the reassignment palatable. To accept that his countrymen so wanted to look good for the Americans, they’d put their golden boy up like a lamb for the slaughter, handing him over to the MFAA unit like they were trading baseball cards. 

Patrick had hated every minute of it, knowing that this was what he was coming back to. But life, at times, had a way of pointing out the flaws in one’s thinking. Patrick isn’t a religious man by any stretch of the imagination, communion and eighteen years of Sunday school aside, but he can’t help but recognize a little divine intervention when he sees it. 

Patrick had been reassigned to a unit whose sole purpose was to find the stolen artworks of Europe, plundered by the Nazis and sold to the highest bidder, eight days before he met the love of his life, an innocent man whose life would be destroyed without Patrick’s help. A man who would be found guilty by association, who’d likely spend years, if not decades, in federal prison awaiting trial, simply for being the godson of a man who’d bought masterworks of art from Hildebrand Gurlitt to sell for profit.

And Patrick would have helped anyway, because Patrick was a man of values, with an unshakable moral compass that had guided him straight and true for over ten years, even if that moral compass didn’t always align with the traditional sense of good and evil. 

But now that Patrick can’t hear Eli’s name without seeing David’s face, outlined in the moonlight, as peaceful as Achilles the night before Paris called him to the battlefield — well, now Patrick is going to bury Eli Hoffman in a hole so deep no one will ever find him, for daring to hurt someone who Patrick so deeply, deeply loved. 

It takes him most of the day to get back to his unit. A trip that should have taken three hours instead takes closer to eight, checkpoints upon checkpoints crippling him as he tries to get to Vouziers-Séchault before the day wears itself out back into night again. 

He’s not in a good place, far from it, and he can’t shake the prevalent feeling of _wrongness_ he’s feeling by the time he finally makes it to his barracks, waved through the gate by the MPs. Everything looks the same, this world he’s been living in for ten years; the same drab gray, the same young GIs in uniforms that have seen better days, the same tension in the eyes of everyone he passes, a tension he sees in his own eyes every day. But unlike other times, something about this homecoming doesn’t sit right. 

It’s him. He’s the one who doesn’t fit anymore. A handful of days in David’s company was all it had taken to unmake him, but Patrick can’t be angry. All he feels is gratitude, that the person he is on the inside finally, blessedly, makes sense. 

He guides his motorcycle into an open spot next to the mechanics bay, and nods to the guys doing repairs on the Humvee that had been broken before he left, and unsnaps his rucksack from the back, his duffle. Inside the duffle is his tuxedo, the silky silver jacket, the black bowtie. He’ll never wear it again, and he’d rolled it as small and tight as he could and probably ruined the threading, the fine stitching, but Patrick couldn’t leave it. It means too much to him, the first moment he knew who he was. The way David had touched him. Kissed him. 

“Captain!” 

Fuck. 

“Didn’t expect the welcome wagon, Private,” Patrick says, hoisting his rucksack over his shoulder and spinning on his heel. He takes five steps towards the officer’s tent, sighs, and looks back. “Well? Come on.”

Private Connor Morrison was a cap snapper, the kind of kid who’d lied on his paperwork to get into the fight and who’d found himself, much too young, in the middle of a war zone not meant for children. Patrick had led a gaggle of them in his time in the Army, but Private Morrison was the youngest of the lot, the kind of hard-nosed kid who’d grown up on mean streets and had no qualms whatsoever of murdering the enemy — until the moment came he had to pull the trigger. If he was seventeen Patrick would be very surprised. 

“You’re back early, sir,” Morrison says, scampering next to him and taking his duffel from him. “We weren’t expecting you until tomorrow.”

“Are you monitoring my movements now, Private?” Patrick asks, because it’s always good to startle the young ones a bit, and he does just that. Morrison’s eyes get huge, and he stutters his way through an apology that takes them through the mess tent for a cup of coffee and to the officer’s tent. “Alright. Alright, kid. Breathe. It’s okay, I promise. It’s nice to know I was missed.”

“I got reassigned!” Morrison says, nearly on a gasp.

“I know. I’m taking you with me.” 

Morrison blinks up at him, owlish. “Where are we going?” 

Patrick’s brow furrows. “I’m...not entirely sure yet. But I’m going to find out.”

He knocks, because he hasn’t lost every shred of sense in his head, but he doesn’t bother waiting for an answer. He opens the door and steps smartly inside, waiting for Morrison to follow in behind him before he shuts to door to spin and look at the trio of men who, seconds ago had been bending over a desk studying a map, and were currently all looking at Patrick with the same stern, foreboding expression. 

“Captain?” Colonel Travis stands up and crosses his arm in front of his chest. “I don’t remember inviting you to enter my office.”

He bites down on the inside of his cheek so hard he tastes the coppery bloom of blood, but it doesn’t do anything to erase the words from the air. “Apologies, sir. I was packing up to return when I got word of a potential move on some of the names listed in the dossier you gave me? I was under the impression no steps were to be taken until all the brass returned.”

The Colonel quirks an eyebrow at Patrick and the expression was so familiar it pinched at something under Patrick’s ribs uncomfortably. He shifts his weight on his feet and pushes the memory of David’s face even further to the parts of himself he keeps protected at all costs. “And where did you hear this from?” 

The question brings Patrick up short and he feels foolish — he should have known the Colonel would take his blathering at face value. It didn’t make any sense, and he doesn’t have another lie ready to replace it with. He slides his shoulders back and tries to put a confidence he doesn’t feel into his voice. “It’s not important. I just need to know how quickly I need to be ready to go.”

There are a few beats of silence in which Colonel Travis narrows his eyes and studies Patrick, and Patrick does his best to keep his breath level and his gaze on the Colonel’s. With a small sigh, he gestures at the man standing in front of him, who until now has been standing silently, assessing Patrick.

“This Mr. Donovan, recently promoted within the OSS. He’s the one who’s got us all here today, working with the ALIU.”

“ALIU?” It turns out more of Patrick’s world than he’d accounted for had shifted upside down in the last six days. 

“Art Looting Investigation Unit,” the man says, his eyes back on the map in front of him. He flicks a glance to Patrick, but there’s a cold removal that Patrick recognizes from career military officers. 

At the mention of the word ‘looting’, Patrick’s blood goes cold and he feels a flame settle high on his cheeks. He can hear David’s voice bend around the question, _“Pocket money? Why?”_ and even without knowing everything, Patrick knows why. And it’s a swift reminder why he pulled himself out of that hotel room and back to a world of olive and khaki and rigidity and everything he’d realized was nothing he wanted. 

“I can see the confusion on your face, Brewer, and I don’t blame you. Things have come together fast in the last six days, and there’s quite a bit to get you caught up on.” 

“Clearly.” Patrick tries to keep the sarcasm out of his voice, but he’s not sure he’s entirely successful. “What else do I need to know, sir?” 

The Colonel turns and grabs a folder off the top of a pile on the corner of his desk. He tosses it to Patrick, who reaches out with one hand and plucks it out of the air. He tucks it under his arm and doesn’t take his eyes off the Colonel’s face. He sees what might be a flicker of surprise in the man’s eyes, but it’s gone as fast as it arrived, and the rest of his face stays remarkably unreadable. “Debrief is in there, should be everything you need. If you have questions, ask Morrison, he should know where to find the answers. Otherwise, the only thing you need to know now is that the water in the showers is hot and you’ve got twenty minutes before chow is over. You’ll meet the rest of your team tomorrow.” 

“My team, sir?”

“The folder, Brewer. Read first, ask questions later.”

The message couldn’t be any clearer, so Patrick shakes the hands of the two men in front of the desk, and sharply salutes the man behind it, turning on his heel with a rigidity that snaps back into his bones and muscles like a steel rod he’d thought finally started to melt into something softer, loser, more capable of bending with the subtle shifts of the world beneath his feet. Patrick feels now like one more sudden turn and he’ll shatter apart entirely. He dismissed Morrions curtly, tucking the arm under his folder and brushing past the other man, who calls after him that the showers are two buildings up on the right, if he needs them. 

Patrick doesn’t want a shower, but he takes one anyway, and he’s not hungry but he feeds himself, because he knows in the parts of his brain that aren’t consciously thinking that he doesn’t want to die, can’t die because if he dies before he brings Eli to justice it will have have been worthless and he just should have stayed warm and happy next to David. And in order to have the best chance of staying alive to do that, he needs to be fed, and watered, and generally clean enough to pass for human. Once he’s done those things, he settles back against the scratchy, military-issue green wool blanket, and flips on the threadbare single light above him, and he reads. 

The first half of the dossier is everything he already knows, and he skips past the pages he knows will contain allusions to David, and to Alexis and Stevie, his eyes so dry they sting and when tears manage to find their way to the corners of his eyes again it’s a relief. 

It's the second half that paints the fuller picture, let's Patrick know exactly what's been going on, and what he's about to be expected to do. The pages paint a horrific picture of cultural genocide the likes of which Patrick had only had glimpses of, during his time in the military. Outlined are the methods the Nazis had taken to not only plunder the cultural heritage of every country they set foot in, but to cache it. Plans to sell hundreds of thousands of works of art, from paintings to drawings to sculpture. 

What had been considered ‘degenerate’ had been burned. 

Names, then, of known and suspected dealers. Gurlitt, Moeller, Boehmer. Graupe. A half-dozen others, and of course, Hoffman. Extremely intelligent men who had either covered their tracks very well, or who were living in the bosom of the Nazi regime, safe in a country of well-armed men fighting a zealot’s war. Opportunists, the lot of them. Patrick sits up enough to spread out the map the OSS had printed for him, color-coded in red, for the sale to the United States, and blue for the sale to other foreign countries, including Switzerland. The map looks like an ink spill, it’s so bright. 

The art flow in and out of Boston, New York City, Charlotte and Atlanta. Switzerland is coated in blue, no surprise there. What’s interesting is the green on the map, which represents the trading circles operating in Europe. 

There’s a reason Eli was in Paris. 

He pages forward in the dossier until he gets to Eli’s section. His is shorter than the others, as he’d only been in the game for a limited period of time, and Patrick doesn’t allow himself to look at _Connected Suspects,_ can’t bear to see David’s name there when he was the lone innocent among a sea of snakes. 

Something is tickling, something in Patrick’s brain wanting to make a connection, but it won’t come to him, as hard as he tries, and he tries most of the evening. It taunts him, but his fellow officers don’t make too much of a fuss when he commandeers the card table to spread out, and then when that doesn’t cut it, the wall behind it. 

“R&R is supposed to be relaxing,” Jameson says, but he comes to stand beside him, toothbrush in his mouth as he stares at Patrick’s evidence. “New assignment?”

“New assignment,” Patrick says darkly. “We’ve been out there fighting them to safeguard a better world for our children and their children, and these bastards are burning our heritage. Literally.”

Dane shakes his head, frowning at one of the pictures Patrick had taped to the wall. “Is that a Van Gogh?”

“ _Painter on His Way to Work,_ ” Patrick says, tapping the end of his pen to the carbon copy. “They burned it. Destroyed it, so others wouldn’t have it. They said it was degenerate art.”

He’s exhausted, emotionally and physically. This time yesterday, he’d been kissing David’s perfect shoulder, his cheek, just to watch the crinkles around his eyes fan out, just to see him duck his head to smile, beautiful in his tuxedo. 

He sucks in a sharp breath and doesn’t miss the looks Dane shoots him. “Everything okay?" 

Patrick presses his lips together into a thin line and nods once, curtly. “Yeah. I’m — I’ll be fine. Nothing a good night’s sleep won’t cure.”

Dane chuckles darkly and reaches out to knock his fist against the heel of Patrick’s boot. “Yeah, good luck getting one of those in this place.” He turns his back on Patrick and crosses to his bed across the officer’s quarters. Patrick’s eyes focus back on the paperwork, but his mind is swimming with details and dates, the names of legendary works of art intermingled with the names of the men that stole them, and Patrick doesn’t slip into something vaguely resembling sleep until almost dawn. 

* 

“Pardon my saying so, but, uh. You look like crap, sir,” Morrison says as he keeps pace next to Patrick, who had barely managed to stay upright through their early morning run and who was, even now, fighting just to put away breakfast. 

Patrick had always been amazed how quickly his body seemed to forget how to keep in the kind of shape the military required of him, but trying to come back off six days of bread and wine, topped off with less than a dozen hours sleep spread over the last four days, and he felt like he’d been scraped out from the inside. There was a hollow drumming in his bones, and a tightness in his muscles that he tries to breathe through, but he ends up just hunching forward a little more and pressing his palm to the stretch of skin over his ribs to soothe the stitch.

“I don’t remember asking you, private,” Patrick snaps, and instantly feels bad at the way the younger man blushes. “But that doesn’t make you wrong, I’m afraid.”

Morrison is a good kid, because he doesn’t seem offended by Patrick’s short temper and shorter line of patience. “Do you think we’re going to be sent to the front?" 

“No,” he says, bussing his tray and waiting for Morrison to do the same. The two privates on KP duty salute, and Patrick nods at them once before sweeping out of the tent. “We’re meeting the rest of the unit in ten minutes. You’re to do two things, Private — shut up and look pretty. Do you copy?”

“Yes, sir,” Morrison says smartly, though his dark eyes scream a thousand questions, but Patrick has no time and less patience for Connor Morrison today.

The camp is alive, even at this, o-dark-thirty. The air is crisp and smells like jet fuel, like washing powder and mud and metal. Overhead, the jets are taking off to get started on their patrol, and the roar of the engines taking off rattles in the back of Patrick’s jaw. They pass the lines for the latrines, and med tent, and then make their way to the officer’s tent where the Colonel would be waiting for them, to introduce Patrick to the men he was meant to keep alive moving forward.

Later, when he thinks back on this moment, he’ll barely recall what it was he expected when Colonel Travis called, “Enter.” Military men like him, certainly, men with some time under their belt, who had been plucked from their individual units just like he had. The best of the best. 

A horrible sense of despair hits him, when he looks at the men standing before him. He sees...pocket squares and bow ties and the high-and-tights he’s used to seeing on GIs, only these aren’t GIs. He’s pretty sure they’re not even _soldiers,_ if that word is going to mean the same thing for what he is and what they are. He’s trying, he really is, to find the benefit of the doubt for this group of assembled men — after all, they wouldn’t have been selected if they weren’t perfect for the job, and if they were, he’d have to assume that maybe he wasn’t, either. Instead, he found a spot in the front row and sat, scanning the maps and photos pinned to the giant corkboard at the front of the room. 

It’s all familiar, and he’s been spending ever spare second he had since breakfast going over the information at hand, but that doesn’t stop his stomach from dropping the minute Travis steps to the podium, raises a hand to bring the assembled group to rest, waits a few extra beats for everyone to find their seats in the general kind of civilian chaos that grates on Patrick’s nerves. When they’re all settled, the Colonel starts speaking, introducing them all to one another as the next official assembly of the Roberts Commission, the carefully chosen men and women who would be responsible for returning the great works of arts and history back to the world at large. Patrick looked down the line and saw a few other scattered faces he recognized from around the base, but no one he’d call a friend, and certainly no one he trusts to help him carry the weight of the only mission that matters to him now: finding Eli. 

He stands when Travis says his name, salutes and introduces himself, and he tries to pay attention to the names and professions of the people around him: art restorers, historians, museum docents, and — when Patrick hears it the edges of the room go suspiciously dark as the ghost of what could have been dances in front of him again — art gallery owners, all of whom will come together under military guidance to achieve the goal of tracking down, protecting, returning and restoring cultural and historical artifacts the scope of which still make Patrick shiver underneath the weight of his uniform. 

Travis goes on to outline the two challenges at hand: tracking down the dealers they haven’t found yet, and recovering the caches of art already hidden around Germany, Italy, and Austria. Patrick crosses his arms and then crosses his fingers, pressing them into the crook of his elbow as he makes one more prayer to the universe. 

His prayer is granted when Travis names him first for the first unit, point command on the units responsible for tracking down the still-at-large thieves and smugglers. A punch of adrenaline straightens his spine by degrees, and he meets Travis’s eye and nods. There are a few dozen men assigned to work with him, and he does his best to note who they are as they raise their hands from various points around the room. He’ll have a full list of names by the time lunch is done, and right now the blood rushing through his ears and the lack of sleep are making him feel jittery and unable to focus. When Travis dismisses them with a salute, Patrick is one of the first out of the room. 

It feels impossible to breathe, like his lungs won’t fill up, but he knows better than to let it show. The last time… the last time, a few months after Dieppe, when Patrick was waking up and going to sleep and having no recollection of anything in between, his commander had sent him to the chaplain, as if prayer could clean the blood from Patrick’s hands, take what he had seen men do to each other from his mind’s eye. He felt now like he had then, like he wasn’t meant to be here, like he had taken a step off the path of his life and into the jungle waiting to swallow him whole. 

He needs to shut everything down but the mission. He just has no fucking idea how he’s going to do that. 

His feet take him across the compound, past smartly saluting soldiers he acknowledges with a nod, and back to the officer’s quarters. 

The mess he’d made of the file is still there, still painting the wall with paper and ink, and he stares at it, struck silent by the enormity of the task before him. He sits at his bunk, dropping his head into his hands. 

“Didn’t you just come from a debrief?” 

Jesus Christ. “Jameson, you’re the nosiest son of a bitch I’ve ever met.” 

“Learned it at my ma’s knee,” Dane replies, cheerful bastard that he is, and cuffs Patrick lightly as he passes towards his own bunk, opening the trunk at the foot and poking in it for his prize, a pair of socks. “Well? The whole post has been in a tizzy since yesterday, when all those pocket squares arrived. Who the fuck are they?”

“A stroke, in person form,” Patrick says, and scrubs at his face for a second before meeting his friend’s eyes. “It’s been decided that we’re going to play nice with the Americans. General Purcell owes someone a favor, or he wants the star before he dies of old age, I don’t know. Either way, an MFAA task force has been attached to our unit, and you’re looking at its newest commander.” 

Dane whistles, long and low. “Holy shit, you’re commander of the nerds.”

 _God._ “I meet them in an hour.”

“They’re just. Really, _really_ going to get killed out there. Or get _you_ killed. Why didn’t you say no?”

So many reasons. The width of David’s palms. The arch of his back. The little splash of pink on his cheekbones when he got shy, the curl of his eyelashes and the curve of his mouth. 

Patrick buries the thoughts at the back of his mind, pushes them underneath a layer of something heavy and opaque. He forces out his thoughts of David and fills the space of them with the thought of Eli, the shape of his mission, the constantly shifting to-dos in his mind that will bring him from here, an existence where Eli is free, to one where justice has been done. 

And if Patrick’s going to do that, the only thing he’s got space in his body for is work. Work, and drive, and focus. He’ll survive on the adrenaline and bring the world down around him, if he has to. 

“You know me, Dane,” Patrick says, collapsing backward and putting his arm over his eyes. “Always looking for something new and exciting.”

He manages a couple of hours of sleep, the steady, deep shuteye that Patrick’s body has learned to take full advantage of. At the beginning, when he was first deployed, these kinds of naps would leave him foggy and exhausted for the rest of the day, but that was before staying awake for twenty, thirty, or forty hours at a time became the norm and not the exception. He got his shuteye where he could, so when Jameson nudges him awake, tells him the time, Patrick feels rested for the first time in days, even if the nagging ball of grief in his throat won’t recede. 

The pocket squares had gotten to camp the day before Patrick’s arrival and been issued the very best gear that the Canadian Army had, so at the very least by the time they’re reassembled again at two in the afternoon they look a bit more like soldiers and a bit less like they’d wandered in off the quad, looking for Freshman Comp. 

It’s a ragtag team, no getting around it, from an art dealer named Arthur Camden who seems like he’d be more at home in a swinger’s club than in the middle of a war, to an Indian professor of art history named Dr. Ray Butani, who in the first ten minutes of their acquaintance tells him his entire life story and tries to sell him life insurance. Bringing up the rear is a sommelier-turned-art historian named Herb Ertlinger, a Smithsonian Museum curator of European sculpture named Dr. Heather Warner, and an art restoration specialist from eastern Europe named Ivan Geljo. 

He looks at Colonel Travis, and the Colonel has the good grace not to bullshit him. “I know.” 

“Sir.” 

“I’m sorry, son, but these were General Purcell’s direct orders.”

“And I’m not one to question orders, sir,” the Colonel glances at him briefly, eyebrow cocked, and Patrick shrugs in acquiescence. “Most of the time, that is. But. These people? I’m supposed to win the war with these people? They’re not soldiers.”

“And neither were you, when you started, Captain,” the Colonel says, clapping him on the shoulder. He leans in close, and Patrick feels a swift and sudden pang of saudade for his grandfather. “But you’ve managed to become just over a half-way decent leader. And as your commanding officer? You’re the best man for this job.”

“Sorry to interrupt, gentlemen, but. We’re much sturdier than we look,” Dr. Butani says, and Patrick would draw some comfort from that if he hadn’t also squeaked as one of the jets did a low fly-by in that moment.

“I’ll leave you to get acquainted,” the Colonel says, _what ever happened to no man left behind,_ and that’s how Patrick finds himself alone, in a room with countless college degrees and the kind of naivete that gets people killed. 

“ _Sit down,_ ” Patrick barks, aware he’s gone into ‘corralling privates’ mode, complete with the voice, but he can’t help it, and he can’t stop it. To their credit, they sit, some more quickly than others, but Patrick isn’t in the mood to placate and he isn’t in a place, emotionally, to reassure. 

“On the table before you is your dossier. You will take it back to your bunk. You will read it, cover to cover. You will come back tonight at 1900 and you will tell me about the three men we’ve been tasked with hunting down and bringing to justice. You’ll tell me the names of their wives, and children, the names of their business and a history of their business dealings. You will become so intimate with their lives that you’ll be able to tell me their favorite color and the way they take their coffee. You will use those big brains that the US government has deemed worthy enough for this endeavor and you will tell me where our search will begin. Do I make myself crystal clear.” 

Five pairs of enormous eyes stare back at him. 

Patrick’s narrow. 

“Dossier says we’ve got four month to track down these bastards, or someone else gets a turn, and let me tell you — I don’t like to lose. So, for the next sixteen weeks of your lives, I am your north, your south, your east, your west. I am your guiding star. You will do as I command. You will answer me with ‘yes sir’, or ‘no sir’. You will answer me when I ask you a _goddamned fucking question._ ”

The startled chorus of “Yes, sir,” is not gratifying. Patrick hates it. They’re civilians, experts in their fields. They should be warm and comfortable in their apartments and homes, safe in the US, not knee-deep in shit and ready to take on the evils of the world. 

“My job is to keep you alive,” he continues, staring at each of them in the eye in the way Morrison had said nearly made him shit his pants the first time Patrick looked at him like that. “My job is to keep you moving, keep the blood inside your body, keep you watered and fed so you can use your brains. I do not tolerate ignorance. I do not tolerate stupidity. I do not tolerate willful disobedience. I want to live, and go home to my family, and if you get in the way of me doing that I will have no qualms kicking you the fuck out of my unit. Do I make myself clear.”

The second chorus of “Yes, sir,” is quiet, fearful. 

Good. They needed to be scared. Fear kept you alive, kept you moving, kept you safe. 

“This is not a game, ladies and gentlemen. This is not an adventure, a romp playing soldiers, something you can talk about at Christmas parties. This is life and death. Our job is to make sure that the men we’ve been tasked with finding are found, brought to justice, and the art they’ve stolen from the world is recovered.” 

He pauses in front of them. 

“We reconvene at 1900. Let me make myself plain. You will be sitting in these seats at 1900, ready to tell me where we’re going tomorrow morning. If you are not, you’re gone. Dismissed.” 

He doesn’t entertain questions, because this isn’t college, and these aren’t students. It’s a habit he’s going to have to break them of, and as he strides from the room all he can think about is how _the hell_ he’s going to keep them alive. 

*

It’s 1830 when Dr. Warner finds Patrick in the Mess. He’s just getting to throw out a dinner he barely touched when a heavy, familiar folder thuds to the table in front of him. 

“Hermann Göring. Formerly second in command to Hitler and creator of the Gestapo, in the last several years he’s grown almost obsessively focused on the confiscation, collection, and sale of Jewish-owned art. Hildebrand Gurlitt, art historian and profiteer charged with raiding Paris to fill Hitler’s Führermuseum, he’s one of four art dealers appointed to the original _Commission for the Exploitation of Degenerate Art._ Eli Hoffman. American-born financier with political connections and immediate access to the financial accounts of the Adler, Lorre, Rose, and Blanc families in Hollywood. He’s thought to be one of the primary access points for distribution and sale on American and Eastern Canadian soil.” Her voice has a gentle lilt to it, and when she finishes talking she sort of half sits, half collapses across the bench from him, breathing heavily. He finishes the cold dregs of coffee in his mug and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Did you just do that all in one breath?” 

“It felt like it.” 

“That’s impressive.” 

“Thank you. Sir. I practiced.” 

“Why?” 

“Why what?”

“Why did you practice...this, when you could have just waited to tell me in several breaths at the briefing we’re due for in —” Patrick looks down at his watch “— about twenty-five minutes now.” 

“Because I drew the short straw — everyone else was too scared to come talk to you, but we were tired of waiting for 1900.”

“You were tired. Of waiting for call time? You all must feel pretty confident to have knocked out a plan in less than three hours.” 

She looks at the table and chews on her lip, and whatever it is Patrick’s expecting her to say, it certainly isn't, “Two hours, actually. We had a pretty solid plan figured out in the first two, and we spent the last half hour debating who would have to come tell you that we didn’t need to wait. We weren’t sure if that would, um. Allowable. To tell you something like that.”

“And if it’s not?”

“Well, Captain Brewer. Like I said, I drew the short straw, and someone had to make it clear to you that you’re being, well. A bit of a jerk about this, truth be told, and we think we might just knock your socks off, if you give us a chance. Please. Sir.” 

There’s a smile on Patrick’s face for the first time in days, and it feels like such a foreign way for his face to move that he wants to reach up and touch his cheeks just to see if that will help him understand what’s happening. “Did you just call your commanding officer a jerk?” 

“I’m guessing that’s also not allowable?” 

Patrick stands and grabs the dossier of the table, handing it back to Dr. Warner and gathering his tray, heading for the nearest trash can along the rows of picnic tables. He jerks his chin in a ‘follow me’ motion and is pleased to see the woman fall in step behind him. “You know, Dr. Warner, I don’t think the upper brass would consider it good leadership for me to tell you this, but — allowable or not, sometimes it’s exactly what needs to happen. Come on, show me this plan you group of geniuses managed to put together in damn near the blink of an eye.”

And Patrick wants to hate the plan, he really does, for the ease with which they’ve come up with it, and for the simple, comfortable way they already seem to communicate with each other. He enters the briefing room to see Ray shouting something over his shoulder to Ivan in stilted Russian, while Arthur does a sort of limp-wristed jog from one end of the room to the other, a sheaf of papers gripped tightly in one hand. He waves at Patrick as he passes, and it’s the furthest thing from a military salute Patrick’s ever received, but there’s a certain begrudging respect to it nonetheless. 

It takes a minute for them to realize Patrick is in the room, and when they do, they fall quiet quickly, coming to a stillness that’s partially wary, partially excited, and Patrick’s been in enough groups of people in his life to know what potential feels like, zipping through the air like an invisible spark.

“Report and tell me what we’re dealing with.”

Ertlinger stands quickly, coming to the front of the tent to the chalkboard that had seen better days. “As the OSS determined a year and a half ago, Hitler has plans to build an art museum, the _Führermuseum_ in his hometown of Linz, Austria. Over the course of the last two years his envoys, among them Hildebrand Gurlitt and Hermann Göring, have worked tirelessly to pillage German-occupied countries of their art, keeping the works Hitler wishes to display in his museum, selling what would not be kept, and burning what failed to meet their moral code. Gurlitt and Göring have envoys of their own, men working in all parts of the world to further their agenda and fund the _Führermuseum_ by the selling of art, but these smaller agents often parcel out their business dealings, moving funds quickly through internally built networks. One of their rising stars has been Eli Hoffman.” 

“Oh! My turn now,” Butani says, eyes lit up and he immediately starts talking quickly, his hands waving through the air as he drags his finger down several sheets worth of columns, each filled with cramped, multidigit numbers that Patrick can’t make out until he’s practically right on top of the board. “These are the financial movings of Mr. Hoffman over the past eighteen months or so. We overlaid that with his meeting with Klaus Perls and Martha Hopkins Struever at the gallery of—” he glances at a clipboard in his hands “— a Mr. David Rose.”

Patrick’s breath begins to quicken in his chest, and the one rational corner of his mind wonders how much of his life will have to pass before he can remember those six days in Paris without tearing open a hole in his chest so large it threatens to annihilate him. He forces his breath through his nose, uncurls his fingers from digging into his palms, keeps his eyes focused on Ray’s face and pretends he’s never heard of David Rose before, never heard him laugh or seen the shine of gaslight bulbs cast shadows on all his hopes and dreams. It’s the hardest thing he’s ever done, and it’s also the simplest choice he’s ever made.

Ray continues, “Those connections apparently fell through for Mr. Hoffman, though, but not before he managed to make connections to several other smaller dealers, and Eastern European arthouses, until eventually he makes contact with—” He slaps the clipboard with a bit too much delight, like he’s pulling the sheet off a completely set table, “Gurlitt!” He slaps the clipboard with perhaps a bit too much glee, looking around at his team for confirmation. They all look at him with varying degrees of fondness and exasperation, and Patrick nods his head appreciatively. It’s a thorough, well laid-out history. There’s only one problem. 

“We know all of that, Dr. Butani.” 

“Ah, yes, of course we do, Captain Brewer. Although I _do_ recall being asked to tell you all the things we were supposed to already know — something about shoe size I believe — but let’s move on, yes? Because it turns out that one, if not several of those smaller art houses are now being closed and left vacant as the front line shrinks. Villagers are fleeing as German forces retreat and they find themselves back in the way of military forces.” 

Patrick feels a cold shiver run up his spine, and there’s a tingling at his temples, the backs of his elbows, the tops of his feet — all the places on his body he forgets to pay attention to until they alert him to the fact that he’s onto something, that those light stones on the path aren’t stones at all, they’re breadcrumbs, and now all Patrick has to do is follow them to their inevitable end. He feels a surge of adrenaline that means he’s on the hunt again, a steel-sharp enthusiasm that bordered on obsession. 

But Eli was only one leg of the trio the team had been tasked with finding, so as much as it burned through his chest and into the muscles of his thighs, he turned his attention to Arthur — “Call me Art, sir” — and asked for an update on Göring, which he was more than happy to provide, although not without Ray butting in every few words to offer an elaborative anecdote or point of clarification. Patrick’s beginning to understand that it might not have been just the short straw that had sent Dr. Warner his way. 

He listens, and as he listens, his brain begins to sort old facts from new, relevant from not, and he watches the people around him fall into a rhythm with one another. Dr. Butani flutters from group to group, the tie that binds, while Art and Herb pass notes back and forth but work in relative silence. Dr. Warner has fallen easily into a liaison of sorts, consolidating and facilitating the wandering sometimes odd thought processes of the others into a language Patrick can more readily understand. 

They're not just smart — they’re brilliant. They’re brilliant in a way Patrick doesn’t expect, and feels foolish for not expecting, because if there’s anything the last several weeks have taught him, it’s the deceiving powers of looks and appearances. They don’t just all possess their own deep wells of knowledge, but they know how to find out the things they don’t know, seem to be able to think just to the left of the problem at hand, and — there’s something oddly familiar about it. They think like he does, he recognizes, or, maybe not quite like he does, but similarly enough that before the hour is out, he’s able to walk the room, checking in and overhearing and letting the information swirling through the air wrap around him, leading him towards some kind of answer. 

They get there before he does, find the last missing piece — Herb finds it, in fact, buried in between lost train manifests, false-front exchange records, and the sheets and sheets of Eli’s financial transactions. “I think...I think maybe we’ve got something,” Herb says, his voice steady even as it ends in a question mark? 

“What do you mean, ‘think’?”

“Well, there’s no way to be sure until we go and check them out, but — I think Hoffman may have circled back after leaving Paris. Not all the way to the city, but I think we’ve been looking further than we need to.” He turns a map around, where several small villages on either side of the French/German border, all in all spanning damn near a hundred miles. 

“And you think he’s...what, gone to ground in one of these little towns?” 

Herb shrugs, but Dr. Warner steps in to answer. “I don’t think so. I’ve been looking through the last lists of unaccounted for art and — I think he’s still got it with him. I think he’s lying low and waiting to offload, and he can’t just be dragging crates and crates of stolen art across the countryside, let alone the border…” 

She trails off and pinches her lower lip between her fingers, but Patrick doesn’t need her to finish to know what she’s saying. “You think he’s stashing them.” 

“I think it’s the safest bet we’ve come up with so far.”

“You know what, I agree.” He nods once, smartly, pulling himself to his feet and pushing in his chair with a sigh. “Ertlinger, get that list of towns to TransOps so they can arrange transport to whichever one you think looks most promising. Everyone else, hit the sheets. We’ve got one hell of a train ride in store for us tomorrow, and 0500 isn’t getting here any slower.” He’s half out the doorway when he pauses and backs up, taking the time to meet each of their eyes. “Good job, team. I’ll see you all tomorrow.” 

* 

Patrick’s nights have been plagued with nightmares for more years than he can count, but that night, he has one so bad that he comes awake screaming. 

“Patrick. Patrick! Jesus Christ.” 

Dane. Talking to him, gripping him by the biceps and shaking him though he’s finally come awake from it. His throat hurts, and he’s breathing so hard, so fast, that he’s shaking with every inhale and every terribly exhale, shuddering against the weight of his own fear. 

David. Across the expanse of a field of French wildflowers, in his soft, cashmere sweater and his trousers too short in the leg, fighting a German soldier with a rifle. Blood, hot and red, splashed across his face, his arms up trying to defend against a man set on murdering him. Screaming for help, begging Patrick to save him, and Patrick unable to cross the distance. 

“Oh, God,” he gasps, and Dane ducks down to meet his eyes, squeezing his biceps hard and grounding him in the present. They’ve done this for each other so many times, since Normandy, since Dieppe, since they watched men commit atrocities against each other so horrific that it played like a film reel in their mind’s eye every hour of every day. 

He’s drenched in sweat, and he realizes that there are lights on, that the other officers are either watching them, sitting up with guns in hand, or have laid back down to sleep. Screaming night terrors are nothing new for any of them, a week doesn’t go by without at least a handful, but Patrick’s never had one. Not like this. 

Oh, God. David, begging him for help, being murdered in front of his eyes.

“You okay?” Dane asks, and lets him go just enough to open his trunk, get his flask. Patrick takes a swig from it, the brandy hot and burning down his throat, and he rubs shaking hands over his face.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and he doesn’t quite know who he’s apologizing to. “Jesus. I’m sorry.”

Dane graces him with a glare and nudges him with a shoulder. “Come on, get dressed. The rest of you turkeys, go back to sleep.”

A chorus of curses follow them outside. It’s a warm night, at the very least, and Dane didn’t even judge him when it took three tries to button his uniform trousers, his hands shaking badly. Patrick has no idea what time it is, but the night breeze feels good on his skin, cooling the sweat pooled behind his neck, under his arms. Dane guides him to the chow tent, empty but for the chaplain, asleep at one of the tables near the exit, and two sergeants on night shift, having a cup of coffee and speaking quietly. Dane leads him to an empty table far enough away that they won’t be heard, and comes back with two cups of coffee, black, his hip flask, and a plate of orange slices. 

Patrick wraps his hands around the mug, closing his eyes for a moment. He has to be up in just a few hours, but just the thought of trying to go back to sleep is enough to fill him with sick horror, and he knows he won’t be sleeping anymore tonight. “I’m sorry.” 

“Yeah, got it,” Dane says, and nudges the oranges closer to him, splashing a healthy swallow of brandy into each of their coffee mugs. “You haven’t been right since you came back from R&R. What the fuck is going on in your head? Did something happen? You meet a girl?” 

Patrick isn’t a fool. Dane Jameson has been his friend for three years now, since he got assigned to this unit. They’d kept each other alive, both literally and figuratively. They’d slept side by side, they’d _fought_ side by side. Patrick had watched over him the night they came across the destroyed church in northern France, bolted and chained from the outside and set on fire with the entire congregation inside. There was nothing he could say that Dane wouldn’t understand, because they’d walked this path side by side. 

So, Patrick does something he’s only ever done once before, and takes a chance.

“I met someone,” he says, panic rabbiting under his heart and sending it fluttering. 

Dane is smart. Too smart by half. Smart enough to hear everything Patrick isn’t saying. He stares at Patrick, more shocked than he should be, considering they’ve been in their back pockets for four years and before nodding, gaze down at his coffee. “Jesus Christ, Patrick, you gotta know that was a stupid fucking thing to do.” And Patrick has a moment to think he’s made the wrong choice, that he’s said the wrong thing, before Dane says, “Wartime romance? Are you kidding me?”

He exhales on a shaking laugh. “I know,” he says, helpless, and takes a drink from his mug. The coffee is hot, but it’s the brandy that soothes his throat, bursts into sparks at the back of his nose. He feels it going down, smooth, and takes another drink. “I couldn’t — I’ve never. With anyone. Like that before. Leaving — it hurt. It hurts right now.”

Dane runs a hand over his mouth, gazing at him from across the table. “Look. You’re about to take a team of civilians out into the world. You need to be smart. You need to keep your head in the game.”

“I know that,” Patrick says, rubbing his face with his hands. “Don’t you think I know that?” 

“I know you know that, but we all need reminders from time to time. You gotta set it all aside, and get the job done.” Dane reaches across the table and squeezes his arm. “And then, Patrick? Once the job is done? You gotta let yourself be selfish for once. You’ve saved all of us ten times over, and it’s time you do something to save yourself.” 

Patrick’s face crumbles without his say-so. “I can’t do this anymore, Dane.”

“No, you can’t,” Dane says quietly. “Look. You and I both know that the Germans are on the run. It’s only a matter of time before they surrender, and we pack up and go home. The money is good, don’t get me wrong, but Patrick, I don’t think I’ve got it in me to do another decade. Don’t think you do, either.” 

“No,” Patrick says, low. “I don’t.”

Dane shakes his head, and drinks his coffee. “Fuckin’ hell.” 

“Fuckin’ hell,” Patrick agrees, and drinks his coffee too. 

* 

There’s hope for the pocket squares yet, because at 0500 on the dot, they’re waiting for him by the gate with their gear, ready to go. 

They’re as fresh-faced as privates on their first day in uniform, almost alarmingly cheerful, though Patrick recognizes coping mechanisms when he sees them by now. In young men it comes out as racy jokes and ribbing, while apparently in the academic set it showed itself as manic optimism and trivia on every subject under the sun. 

“Pygmy shrews!” Dr. Butani is saying, as Patrick goes through their gear and their uniforms, checking straps, checking weapons, and dumping any miscellaneous items that would only slow them down. He’s also garnered himself a little viewing party, though that may be because so far, he’s confiscated two bottles of red wine (Ertlinger: “A pick me up! Medicinal!”), four books on the insect life of Malaysia (Butani: “A little light reading, Captain.”), and lady’s red lingerie (Camden: “A pick me up! _Medicinal._ ”) Warner had a round of goat’s cheese he lets her keep, if only because it’ll be a nutritious addition to their C-rations, and the same for Ivan and his mother’s morale-boosting sugar cookies. 

“What in the _hell_ are you talking about,” Ertlinger asks, scowling at Patrick and looking longingly at his wine sitting in the dirt. “What about this moment made you think of pygmy shrews?”

“There are very few animals native to France, as it shares such a tremendous landmass with its neighbors, but pygmy shrews, along with flamingos, are native to France! While I don’t believe we’ll be seeing many flamingos, as they’re wading birds, the likelihood that we see a pygmy shrew is one in eight. One in eight!”

“You’re far too excited about seeing a rodent,” Heather remarks, shouldering her pack again.

“It’s said that Leonardo Da Vinci would go out to his garden terrace and look for them before his morning ablutions, convinced that catching the spry little creatures would get the blood flowing and ready for the day,” Dr. Butani says, sighing at his books in the dirt. 

Heather says, “You’re lying.”

“Yes,” and Butani giggles — _giggles_ — and Patrick feels a spike of dread tumble down his bones. Morrison stares at him with open horror, and Patrick sighs, handing the kid his rifle.

The train is only going to take them as far as Chambley-Bussières, where the 5th Canadian Armored Division has been holding the line for four months, after having bombed the tracks leading into Luxembourg. Lt. Colonel Ledue is to give them regional maps made by the 4th Regiment’s cartographers, with inroads across the border that should give them a better indication of what to expect. After that they’re on their own, but it’s nothing Patrick isn’t used to.

The train ride is short, just a few hours, and Patrick is exhausted, but he can’t rest. He’s keyed up, thoughts of David plaguing his every moment. Patrick has lived a lifetime of breaking hearts, his father’s when he joined the army, Rachel’s when he told her he couldn’t ask her to wait for him, his mother the last time he saw her, waving from the window of a train just like this one. David’s is the worst of them all.

Patrick is in love with him. He doesn’t think he’ll ever stop being in love with him, if his life ends here in the French countryside or fifty years from now in an old folk’s home. Patrick will love him every minute of every day, until he’s gone gray and forgets his own name, and long after, a faceless and dreamy love for a man he won’t remember, except to know, to his bones, that for a beautiful moment in time he loved and was loved. 

He closes his eyes, and lets himself imagine what his life could have been. A little cottage with a stone facade, and red shutters, and a white door. A little cottage, with a small garden in front, where David tended to azaleas and chrysanthemums. A little general store that sold beauty products and cheese, wine and brooms and penny candy at the till. David in his eccentric clothes, settled into himself and so very, very happy, sparkling like champagne on a sunny day with joy like oxygen in his lungs. 

“Captain?” 

He opens his eyes, looks up. Morrison is standing there in his full gear, Butani and Camden behind him. 

“We’re here, sir.”

The train is slowing under him, and he looks out the window, at the train station coming into view. The 5th had turned the station into a motor yard, lines of departing and arriving vehicles, and behind that a sea of tents that spoke to the time the company had spent here. Four months for a standing army was a long time, and he comes to his feet quickly, pulling his pack on and his rifle strap onto his shoulder. 

“Stay with me at all times. Do not wander. Do not stop to look at something. Do not get in the way of these men and their work.”

“Yes, sir,” they chorus behind him, and Patrick nods sharply.

They’re met at the station by one of Lt. Colonel Ledue’s staff sergeants. He leads them through the rows of tanks and canons, safe from the eyeline of enemy aircraft, though Patrick knows that hasn’t been a problem since the winter, when the Allies had emerged victorious in the Ardennes Counteroffensive. Lt. Colonel Ledue’s tent is at the northeastern corner of the camp, and when they arrive he’s speaking to two of his men, a major and a lieutenant. 

Patrick and Morrison straighten into perfect salutes, which the men before him return. “Captain Patrick Brewer and Private Connor Morrison, 10th Medium Regiment, Royal Artillery.”

“Captain Brewer,” Lt. Colonel Ledue says, in his thick French accent. “Major Marsden, Lieutenant St. Pierre. Colonel Travis has sent word about your mission. I have the maps for you. Marsen and St. Pierre will be attending you to Amnéville, but no further.”

“Thank you, sir,” Patrick says, but Lt. Colonel Ledue waves him over. 

“The maps were made by our best cartographers, but as you well know, the topography of this country changes with every battle,” he says, spreading them out and weighing them down with a rifle and a miniature bust of George Washington, which is so out of left field that Patrick wants to laugh. He knows better than to do so, well aware of the brass and their eccentricities, so he forces himself to look at the map.

It’s good. Better than what he was expecting, though also larger than he was expecting. It’s been written on in pencil, likely by Lt. Colonel Ledue himself, making note of destroyed towns, a mine shaft that had been booby trapped, a creek which had been rerouted after an explosion destroyed the side of a mountain, and had flooded several miles of farmland. 

Amnéville buttresses up against the border of what the 5th Canadian Armored Division had been monitoring. Patrick is well aware that if crates of stolen art had been anywhere in the thirty square miles around them, these boys would have found them. “Yes sir, I understand,” Patrick says, and Lt. Colonel Ledue nods sharply. 

“We’ve marked where the mine fields begin and end, but after Amnéville you’ll be on your own,” Lt. Colonel Ledue says. “Godspeed.”

“Thank you, sir,” Patrick says, and he and Morrison salute once more, before leaving the commander’s tent. 

St. Pierre and Marsden commandeer a troop vehicle, which was kinder than Patrick had been expecting, the MFAA is offered luxuries that common soldiers are not, he supposes. They don’t speak much and Patrick doesn’t make an effort, seeing his own exhaustion, his own futility, reflected in their eyes. It’s a strange camaraderie to feel, Patrick supposes, but it allows him to use the trip to study their surroundings, the way the hills get hillier and the trees get thicker the closer they get past Metz. 

Amnéville had been a resort town before the war, fed by a hot spring. It had been a Nazi favorite during the war, if Patrick remembers correctly. Hitler himself had stayed a night there, cooking his godforsaken balls in the hot spring spas, trimming his disgusting little mustache in its marble sinks, and enjoying whatever else despot maniacs did on their time off. 

The twenty miles pass in just over an hour, and soon enough they’ve reached the edge of the 5th’s watch and come to a stop. Patrick bangs the side of the truck and Morrison rallies the troops, gets them disembarked. St. Pierre and Marsden nod at him, and Patrick shakes their hands. “Thank you.” 

“Be safe,” St. Pierre says. “Colonel Peters and the 53rd Fusiliers will be waiting at Station Marville.”

Due northeast, roughly forty-eight miles. “Heard.” 

“Godspeed,” St. Pierre says, and within a few minutes they’re nothing but a speck in the distance, kicking up dust from the road.

He feels six pairs of eyes on him, and Patrick can remember being a terrified Second Lieutenant, his gold pip freshly minted on his shoulder and his subordinates looking to him for guidance. He feels the fear he had then, but not the blank terror that he’d do something to get them hurt, get them killed. That ship had already sailed, and the blood of his men already stained his hands red. 

He’s going to do everything in his power to keep these people alive, even if it kills him. 

“We walk in single formation,” he tells them. “I take point. Ertlinger, you and Camden take up behind me, side by side. Butani and Warner, you take mid-point. Geljo, you and Morrison guard the rear. Am I understood?”

A chorus of “Yes, sir’s” echoes back at him, and he nods sharply. “You will do as I do. If I stop, you stop. If I crouch, you crouch. If I hit the dirt, you hit the fucking dirt. Do not mouth off. Do not question me. I will give you clear hand signals. If I point left with four fingers, like so, you move left. Same for the right. If I hold up a closed fist, that means hold, and do not make a sound.”

They answer in kind, and Patrick is not happy with this entire fucking situation, but it’s the best they’ve got. He doesn’t even bother getting into the hand signals Morrison could give from the rear, and just prays that his hunch is right, that Geljo is ex-military of some kind. He has a feeling they’re going to need it.

The area is truly picturesque. At the beginning, when Patrick’s head had still been buzzing from Normandy, when the shakes finally stopped and the bullet wound healed, he can remember being shocked by how beautiful France was. Not just the land, though the land was beautiful, wildflowers and rolling hills, thick dark forests and sparkling rivers, but the buildings, the _history_ that seemed unchanged from the time of lords and ladies, knights and chivalry. Metz and its outlying towns are just like that, beautiful, war-torn time capsules. 

Butani regales them about the Porte des Allemands in the distance, and Patrick learns that the Seille river before them had once been an important mode of the transport of goods, and the Porte stood as a fortification against attack, a choke point. It makes sense, because the Germans had used it for the same reason. The scars of battle still taint this beautiful area, beautiful land, and as they walk alongside the river, crossing it at one of the wooden bridges, he thinks this is what the Teutonic Knights must have felt when they built this structure. A burning sense of home, of pride, of the need to keep it safe. 

The Germans had pillaged Amnéville, as they’d pillaged everything. The town sits nestled against the Ardennes forest, where Patrick knows the hot springs pool, though it doesn’t look like a spa resort anymore. Crumbling buildings, destroyed Roman cobblestone streets, burnt out husks of homes and businesses. It isn’t deserted, to Patrick’s terrible surprise; he sees the flicker of hands at curtains on second story floors, sees a mother grab her toddler by the arm and yank him indoors as they approach. Everywhere he looks, people scamper and escape, and Patrick’s heart goes out to them, to the suffering they’ve endured, the suffering they’re _still_ enduring. 

It’s not his first time talking to a frightened local, and it won’t be his last. 

He comes to a stop in the middle of town and feels countless pairs of eyes burning into him. These people are terrified of anyone wearing a uniform, and with fear comes anger. It didn’t matter that they were in Ally dress, patches at their shoulders. These were common people, simple people, and a soldier was a soldier.

“ _Nous ne vous voulons aucun mal,_ ” he says, and lets go of his rifle, letting it hang by its clip. He holds his hands out wide, coming to a stop in the middle of the square. He’s butchering the French, he knows that, but he doesn’t know how else to tell these people they mean no harm. 

It takes a long while, longer than he expected, for someone to come out of one of the buildings. A woman, with long hair tied behind her neck, her long dark skirt soiled with dirt and dust. She’s an older woman but strong, straight of spine, sturdy in a way that reminds Patrick of his mother. She’s carrying a Gewehr 41 rifle that Patrick has seen shoot holes out the back of someone’s head. 

“You are not Germans,” she calls. It isn’t a question, but Patrick shakes his head. 

“No, Madame.” 

“American?”

“Yes,” Patrick says, because he finds it’s always more difficult to explain that he’s Canadian when he has the flat, American accent that is instantly recognizable. “We’re looking for someone. A war criminal. A man who would have come through here with a truck, carrying many strangely sized crates.”

The woman drops the rifle down to hang by her side, anger tightening her face. “Oui. He was here, but is no longer.” 

He hears the team murmur beside him, and clamps down on the hope that rocks the world under him with an iron grip. “Could we ask you some questions? 

She raises the rifle again, and Patrick holds his hands out a little higher. “We mean no harm, madame. Please. If you can tell us the direction he went, we will leave.”

She frowns sharply, studying him. Patrick has been told many times that he has a boyish face, and he uses it now to its fullest potential, trying to put her at ease. 

She doesn’t lower the gun, but she does say, “East. Over the Moselle. Rurange-lès-Thionville,” and then she spits, on the ground, furious, and Patrick isn’t a stupid man. 

“Thank you, Madame,” Patrick says, and then, “Morrison. Take point and take us out of here.”

“Sir,” he hears behind him, and Patrick takes a step back, then another, and the pocket squares are stumbling backwards until they get their feet back under them, but Patrick has never shown his back to someone with a gun in his life, and he isn’t starting now. She lowers the rifle the further they backtrack, so that’s something, but Patrick doesn’t allow himself to turn until they’ve left the town proper. 

His knees are a bit like jelly, and Camden says, “What the fuck, we almost just died,” and Warner is hissing at him but it’s Ertlinger who says, “What… what was that?” 

“The most dangerous enemy you’ll ever encounter,” Patrick says, and points them across a wheat field, to a second bridge he can see in the distance that will get them over the Moselle River. 

The Ardennes Counteroffensive was only five months ago, and the ravage of war litters the expanse of what was once beautiful land. The Germans had perfected their blitzkrieg tactics by the time Patrick deployed to Europe, but the counteroffensive had been the first time they hadn’t succeeded. All they'd done was leave scars on the land, scars that would heal in time, but which brought Patrick back to Normandy all over again. Blast holes and fields of burnt crops, destroyed barns and sagging windmills. The very sky seemed grayer here, and even now there was still a smell in the air that Patrick had come to associate with death and decay. 

The team finally goes quiet behind him, and Patrick is glad. He’s glad, and he’s achingly, achingly tired.

They cross through burnt pastures, the dead foliage crunching under their boots, and a nameless creek a few feet across, not deep enough even to get into their boots. Some directional signs still linger along main roads, and as they emerge from a pocket of trees the road expands into the main thoroughfare for Rurange-lès-Thionville

It’s tiny, smaller even than his hometown, and like Amnéville it hasn’t been left untouched by war. Even from here, Patrick can see the burnt-out hollow of a church, the— 

He’s falling before he’s even registered what he’d heard, and hitting the dirt with such force that he knocks the wind out of himself. Overhead, a second whistle, and Morrison screams, “ _Get down!_ ” and there’s another whistle, a fourth, puttering into the trees behind them. A pained groan, Warner saying, “Oh, God!”

Fuck. _Fuck._

Ahead. One of the houses, a three-story ruin black and destroyed. The church just beyond. The horse carriage laying on its side in the middle of the street. He hisses, “Do not stand up. Do not move. Is everyone alive?”

“What the fuck is happening,” Camden is saying, his voice shaking so badly Patrick can barely understand him.

“We’re getting shot at, you stupid man!” Butani shrieks, and Ertlinger shushes him. Geljo is groaning, and Morrison says, “Geljo, sir, the arm. There’s blood.” 

“I’ve got him,” Warner says, voice pitched high, and Patrick works his binoculars out of his side pocket.

The town seems abandoned, but they always do. It takes him less than ninety seconds to see movement at one of the windows, the glint of a barrel. He thinks it might be an MP40, which is extremely bad news for them, but something tells him there aren’t that many Germans here. Stragglers. Deserters maybe. There’s no movement for miles, no vehicles, no smoke from fires. They’re hiding here and waiting out the war. Patrick’s seen it before, and its fucking bad luck. 

“Do not stand up,” he says again, and tries to inject as much calm into his voice as he can. They’d just come through a copse of trees, and it would be the safest place for them. “Do not get on your knees. Move back into the trees.” 

“Oh my God,” Camden moans, but he hears the rustle of uniforms on dirt, and he knows they’re moving back, squirming through the tall grass as carefully as possible. Patrick follows, ignoring Geljo’s blood — it isn’t arterial, though there’s a lot of it. Messy. A graze, or a through-and-through. He’s groaning, cursing in a language Patrick doesn’t recognize, and it’s reassuring. 

It takes them almost an hour to drag themselves through the dirt and back into the trees. The sun is on their side, has crested west enough to leave the copse in late afternoon shadow, though Patrick doesn’t dare get up. He keeps his eyes trained on the buildings before them, counts three — four — five, heads peeking up around windows, the tail of a gray uniform coat and the bob of two heads moving from behind the horse carriage and deeper into the town. He hears Morrison squirming to him from his right, but Patrick keeps his eyes trained, trying to determine how many of them there are. “Geljo alright?”

“Flesh wound,” Morrison says. “How many, sir?”

“Six, so far.” 

“Deserters?”

“Likely, though I think it’s more than that. No vehicles, no cooking fires. They’re keeping their heads down. We got too close.” 

“Fuck,” Morrison says. 

“Fuck,” Patrick agrees. “We’ll wait until nightfall, and then a little longer. Make them think we ran.”

Morrison is silent, and Patrick says, “Problem, private?”

“No, sir.” 

“Speak your mind.” 

“Just — we have so many civilians. Shouldn’t we just try to leave?”

“No,” Patrick says, quietly. “They’re desperate men. If we circle them, try to get closer to the border, the chances that they come after us for our weapons and gear is good.”

“What do we do, sir?”

Patrick hands Morrison his binoculars. “Look. Far back side of the village.”

Morrison adjusts the binoculars, and does as Patrick asks. “The church?” 

“The church. Epistle side. We go in through the south transept, and come up behind them. I don’t think there are more than six. I lead, you follow. We take them out quietly. No fire power unless absolutely necessary.” 

He hears the click of Morrison’s swallow. “Okay, sir.”

From behind him, Ertlinger says, “If you don’t mind my saying so, that is an extremely foolhardy plan, Captain.” 

Patrick swallows the first three responses, then the fourth too. “They’re hiding here, but it’s likely they’re hiding _something_ here as well.” 

That gets their attention. Butani sidles up on Morrison’s right. “Do you think something was left behind?”

“I think that six men is a lot of men for a band of deserters,” Patrick says, and takes his binoculars back from Morrison. “Get some rest, all of you, and be ready to move on my mark.” 

* 

Patrick doesn’t sleep, couldn’t hope to, though the pocket squares do. Geljo is alive, the graze having nicked him in the arm. A few inches to the right, and they’d have a body to contend with. Patrick doesn’t tell him so, because he isn’t a monster, but he thinks Geljo knows anyway. 

The sun goes down in glittering waves of red and orange, darkening to the blue of night. Out here, in the middle of nowhere, the night sky is illuminated by a million stars, though Patrick is grateful that the moon is but a sliver. Easier, in the pitch dark, to see the shadow of a campfire, the tendrils of smoke. 

There’s only one campfire, and it’s a small one. Patrick was right. Six, at the most.

No one complains about their discomfort, which Patrick appreciates, because his body aches just as much from lying on cold, hard ground. He does his best to keep himself warm, though the nighttime chill is deepening. He lets midnight come and go, as well as one AM, until the campfire dies out. At two-fifteen, he rouses them from their fitful dozes. 

“Stay here. Stay silent. Do not move,” he murmurs. “I’m leaving my pack here. Give it one hour. If Morrison and I don’t return, get Geljo and backtrack to the 5th.” 

“We can help,” Ertlinger says, though he doesn’t sound convinced, and either way, Patrick isn’t going to let a civilian go in to do something that’s his job. 

“No,” he says. “One hour only. Am I understood.”

“Captain, please be careful,” Dr. Warner whispers, and Patrick takes it for assent. 

His body complains as he gets to his feet, crouched as he was in the trees, and he waits, silent, for the bullets to start. They don’t. A few steps forward, a few more, and he’s out of the copse of trees. Silence. Nothing but the sound of crickets, nighttime birds, the rustle of the wind. 

He holds up a finger. One guard. 

Morrison nods, and together, they move as quickly and quietly through the dense, high grass as possible. They wade through a fork of the Moselle River, waist-high, as silently as possible, then loop around the further-most building, crouching low and beginning their approach on the church. 

It would have been the town’s crowning achievement, it’s deepest pride. Even in the dark Patrick can see how cared for the grounds had been, the rose bushes and paved paths, the white clapboard now hopelessly destroyed. When he and Morrison squirm their way through the hole left in the transept, the interior of the church is just as beautiful, polished pews — broken and cracked though they are — showing the tender care the town had taken for their place of worship. 

It reminds him of the church back home, Protestant,not Catholic but all churches bore similarities to one another. He can almost picture his mother at the door, in her black Sunday dress and pumps, her hat with the netting that came down over her eyes. She’d always been most beautiful when ready for church. 

If only she could see him now. 

_For what I am about to do, I’m sorry._

The first, the one who had taken shots at them, is asleep in the attic of the home nearest the town’s gate. Patrick makes sure he never wakes up again. 

The second, and third, meet similar fates, near the burning embers of their campfire.

The fourth is taking a piss, and his blood is hot on Patrick’s forearms, splashed in a spray over Morrison’s young face.

The fifth sees them, raises his voice in a cry, and Patrick breaks his neck, cutting off his shout of alarm in a wet gurgle.

The sixth, Patrick shoots dead. 

It takes them less than ten minutes. It takes another thirty to check every square inch of the town, to be sure they’re alone, before he sends Morrison to get the others.

Their central place of operations had been in the old schoolhouse. The pupil’s desks had all been shoved to one corner and used to store crates of supplies, food, munitions. It’s clear from Patrick’s first pass that they hadn’t been here long, four weeks at most, set up to wait for someone’s return. He finds enough supplies in groups of six to ascertain that the six lives he’s taken tonight were all that were here. 

In the teacher’s office, he finds a typewriter and the German cases that he recognizes on-sight as the ones they used to transfer intelligence, locked with a number pad but easy to break if given enough time. 

“Sir?”

He looks up at Ertlinger in the doorway, his face pale and smudged with Geljo’s blood. He looks terrified. “Everyone here?”

“Yes,” Ertlinger says, at length, before entering the office. “Were there six? Like you thought?” 

“Yes. Germans. Not deserters. Waiting for someone to return. Too many supplies, uniforms too clean. I think we’ve found part of the supply chain,” Patrick says, and comes around the desk. “I’ll need your help to bury them.” 

Ertlinger’s eyes go wide. “Bury them?”

“We won’t have any more trouble for a few days,” Patrick says, and guides him back out into the school room to where Warner is putting a bandage on Geljo’s arm, Butani is poking at the crates, and Camden has his hands on his knees, gasping, because he’s been sick after taking a look at Morrison’s face. “It’ll give us enough time to do a search, see if we can find some information. And yes, it’ll give us enough time to bury them. Morrison, go wash your face. Camden, Ertlinger, Butani. I need the three of you with me, so we can get it done.”

They’re staring at him like he’s grown a second head, and Patrick says, quietly, “They would have killed us if the tables were turned. But they were still someone’s father, brother, son. War doesn’t always give us room for honor, but when it does, we take it. If you don’t think you can help, I understand.”

“We… we’ll help,” Butani says, and swallows hard, straightening. “We’ll help you.”

He nods. “Thank you. Warner? You alright here?” 

“I’ll come assist you as soon as I get this wound dressed,” she says softly, eyes dark and infinitely gentle in her sweet face. “My father was a minister. I can say a few words.” 

“Thank you,” Patrick says again, quietly, and moves his exhausted and aching body forward.

It takes them three days to scour Rurange-lès-Thionville. The town is a quarter of a mile wide, and has seven buildings to its name, including the schoolhouse, a store of some kind before it was looted and ransacked, and five homes. If there was anything of value they don’t find it, looted when the town was burned to the ground. Even the church has been emptied, no liturgical vessels, no processional crucifixes, no chalices or ciboriums.

On the first day, they bury the dead, and sort the supplies into what could be taken, what could not be taken, and what they’d flag for the 53rd to pick up later, including a bolt hole of weapons, including machine guns, semi-automatic rifles, and pistols.

On the second day, after four hours of work, Patrick cracks both the locked case he found in the teacher’s office, as well as the encrypted documents. It’s encoded with the Reservehandverfahren cypher.

Which is extremely lucky for them, because Patrick is an expert in it and kept his book on hand in his pack. It had never steered him wrong, and after four hours doing the transposition, followed by the bigram substitution, Eli’s movements unfold like a flower blooming after a rainstorm.

The relief staggers him, nearly sends him to his knees. He cries, ugly and bitter, hands clasped and shaking at his mouth, for the relief of this, for knowing that he had made the right choice to leave David behind, asleep in their bed at the Gaston, and go on this chase. 

It’s proof. The proof they needed. The proof _he_ needed. 

“My God,” Butani breathes, that night when Patrick lays out all of the encrypted missives, and his code breaking beside them. “This — we know where he’s going.”

“We know where he’s going,” Patrick says, quietly. “Eight towns to search, starting at Walschbronn and ending at Eppenbrunn. If he’s not in one of these towns…” 

“He’s off the map,” Art says quietly. 

Patrick nods and taps the description. “No more looking for a needle in a haystack.”

“Shame, I was getting good at it,” Geljo says cheerfully, his arm in a sling and a smile on his face.

They find it on the third day, in the last house they have left to search. The back half of the house is destroyed, but the front half is in pristine condition. Mold, mildew, and water has gotten in, but the furniture is still in place where the owners of the home had placed it, the curtains blowing in the light breeze from the destroyed kitchen and back patio. 

In the front parlor, dusty and left to rot, is a grand piano. Camden sits at it with a flourish, makes to play, but the keys won’t sing. 

When Patrick lifts the top they find a drawing, something very, very old on very, very brittle paper, and Patrick gets to watch Butani burst into tears, Ertlinger hoot and holler like he’s at the ponies, and Camden mutter, “Holy shit, holy shit,” roughly sixty eight times. 

“It’s a Rembrandt,” Heather whispers, and well. 

Holy shit. 

*

They keep watch over the Rembrandt at all times. 

“It’s an etching on drypoint,” Ertlinger had said, as Camden carefully packed it in dry muslin and cotton fiber, rolling it with supreme care. “And roughly four hundred years old. Any moisture whatsoever spells doom for it.” 

Patrick doesn’t know much about art, but he’s smart enough to know a Rembrandt was a big deal. He’d ordered a twenty-four-hour watch on the case they’d put it in, and made sure it was in visible sight at all times, especially when they were combing through crumbling villages and destroyed towns over the course of the next three weeks, crossing bodies of water or ducking through mine shafts to get across terrain quicker. 

They’re about eight miles from the border when the dirt road forms into cobblestone path, and a tiny village comes into view as they crest the hill they’re on. It’s clearly been destroyed by fire, burnt husks of houses half-collapsed on themselves, hay bales that hadn’t caught blaze left to molder. Four or five months ago, he estimates, on a windy day that reduced most of the village to ash. 

Patrick calls a halt, frowning sharply. 

“Oh, thank god,” Butani gasps loudly, collapsing into the dirt like someone’s cut him off at the knees.

“Alright,” Patrick says, as Butani groans dramatically and Warner laughs, even as she too sinks down on a boulder next to the path. “We have to check the town out before we can stop.” 

“I’m sure we could sleep here,” Camden says, but backtracks immediately when Patrick’s sharp gaze finds him. “That is, I mean, we should check out the village.”

Patrick thinks for a moment, weighing his options. On the one hand, his ragtag group of misfits. On the other, a private who was quick with a gun and could sweep in fifteen minutes if asked to. 

No one had taken potshots at them since yesterday morning, but unlike the first half dozen times it had happened over the past three and a half weeks, his unit no longer panicked like terrified squirrels. They could never hope to shoot back, though they gave it their all, and Patrick was almost grateful for all the noise they made shooting at trees, bushes, barns, because it terrified the enemy stragglers to either run, or be distracted enough that Patrick could ambush them. He’s confident that if this were a similar situation, they could handle themselves. “Morrison is going to join me,” Patrick decides, ignoring their surprise. “You stay here and guard the case.” 

“Are you sure that’s safe?” Ertlinger asks, but Patrick doesn’t bother to answer, instead motioning for Morrison to cover his six.

Morrison’s a good kid, and good at his job, and he responds immediately to all of Patrick’s signals, which is a breath of fresh air after spending the last eight days trying to herd civilians. They were doing better than he expected, and they’d made good time today, nearly sixteen miles over rough terrain. Patrick could easily go on, as could Morrison — they could walk until they were told to stop, and often during the war they _had._

The village reminds him painfully of Bougival. The houses are scorched and burned to a ruin, hollowed out by crumbling wood and the collapse of second stories, but there’s something about the remains of business signs, the snaking creek to the east, that makes him think of that charming and cheerful little town. These people hadn’t had as much luck as Bougival, though. There aren’t corpses, which gives Patrick some hope that the residents had seen the Germans coming and abandoned their homes before the invading army swarmed them. 

It takes less than thirty minutes to do a walkthrough of the few remaining buildings left standing. The only thing living is a dog, who spooks and runs in the opposite direction when it sees them. He and Morrison go over the town twice before he gives the all-clear to bed down, signaling his team to come through the gate. 

The house he’s chosen for them to camp is the most structurally sound, leading Patrick to believe that there’d been a southerly wind the day the fire destroyed the village. Broken windows aside, there are a few rooms still intact on the bottom floor, with enough cover to hide the light of a fire and cook the C-ration tins over an open flame. 

Geljo gets the Rembrandt safely stowed where they can all see it and where each watch-shift can grab it and go if trouble comes sniffing. Patrick doesn’t think that will be happening tonight, but Patrick has been in the military for ten years, and he doesn’t trust anything or anyone, not even himself. 

Geljo gets the fire going, humming under his breath, and just like every night since they began their mission, the pocket squares fall into their shorthand, a language Patrick doesn’t speak and doesn’t think he ever will. The language of art and the business of art, shows and galleries, museums and debuts. _David’s language,_ he thinks, and remembers how much David had hated it, how much he’d wished he didn’t have to go back to it. 

He can’t think of David. His hands, and his sweet, funny smile. The sound of his laugh. If he does he’ll go crazy, he’ll lose focus, and Patrick can’t. He absolutely can’t, right now, not if he wants to bring these people back home alive. 

Thoughts of David leave him jittery in a way he can’t describe, and he leaves the team to their discussion, their laughter and camaraderie, the C-rations slowly warming over the fire. 

The house must have been nice, before it had been destroyed. The remnants of silk curtains at the windows, plush rugs left to rot, the frame of a settee next to the crumbling remains of a fireplace in white stone. Loved and carefully maintained. He wonders what the owners would thinkt of them staying here, safe under the caved-in roof, and likes to think that they would have liked it. That someone would be finding respite here, when they no longer could.

There’s a piece of furniture which at one point was a beautiful sideboard. Patrick’s grandmother had owned one just like it, and had kept it covered in doilies in different patterns and shapes for so long that after her death, when they’d been emptying her home, the sideboard had been patterned in perfect diamonds and circles of sun bleached wood. 

It’s a little bit of home, unexpectedly, and he finds the lump he’s carried in his throat for weeks now harder to swallow around than ever. 

He’s still in earshot of the team, but it’s easier now to tune them out, to spread out his maps. They’re due to meet up with the 53rd Fusiliers tomorrow, who should be about seven miles due southeast from their current position. The Colonel had said the 53rd would have any new intelligence waiting for them, and they would hand over the Rembrandt as well, if Colonel Peters had a convoy car to spare. 

He feels a cold shudder travel down his spine for a moment, enough for him to swing his rifle back around from his pack, dart his eyes out the nearest window. The wind has picked up, just a bit from the west, and he stays stock-still, studying the foliage in the dying sunlight. It isn’t eyes he feels, necessarily, but it’s enough for him to step out the hole where the back door used to be, to scan the horizon. 

It takes fifteen minutes before he’s satisfied they’re alone, to turn to the different pair of eyes looking at him. 

Dr. Warner is studying the horizon as well, though she doesn’t see what he sees — doesn’t have the experience needed to look for the glint of scopes, the difference between a helmet and foliage. He doesn’t say that, though, because there’s no reason to be unkind. “Are we alone?”

“Yes,” he says, and unclips his rifle from his back, setting it on the table beside his maps. 

She doesn’t catch a hint, because Heather Warner is not someone who catches hints. She comes to stand beside him, gazing down at his terrain map thoughtfully. “You must be hungry.” 

He is, but the officer always eats last. “Has everyone gotten chow?” 

“Morrison made sure of it,” she says, and hands him a tin bowl and spoon. “Are we on track to meet with the other unit?" 

“Tomorrow,” he says, after a spoonful of pork and beans. “Noon, if we start out at 0500. The 59th will only wait for us until then, so we need to make good time in the morning.”

She rests her hip against the table, crossing her arms for a minute. Some of her curls were escaping the tight chignon she kept her hair in. He knows she wishes they had some washing water — Christ, Patrick does too — but she hadn’t made a fuss, not like Ertlinger had. “You should rest.” 

“So should you. Morrison divvy out the watches?” 

“He did. You won’t be on shift tonight tonight.”

“Is that so?”

There’s a dangerous note in his voice, but she seems undeterred. “Yes, that’s so. You haven’t slept in two days, Captain.”

What could he possibly tell her? That he can’t sleep because every time he does, he sees David in ruin, behind bars? Or worse, infinitely worse, David screaming for help from across a field of wildflowers, fighting for his life? “I’m fine.” 

“You’re not,” she says, but it’s gentle. She taps a finger on one of his maps. “You don’t think we’re going to catch them, do you?”

“I think that there are a lot of places for men to hide in the broken corners of this world.”

“There are. But that’s why we’re here.” 

“I suppose so,” Patrick says, and closes his eyes against the reality of never finding Eli. Of chasing him for weeks, months, years, and still turning up with his hands empty. Of being killed before he could find that son of a bitch.

He looks up, past her to the back door. The sun is setting, and the overgrown grass waves gently in the spring breeze, backlit with golds and reds. He’s sat in that grass, slept in that grass, listened to his men die kneeling in the mud. He’s listened to the chaplain give mass, to Colonel Travis urge them upward and onward, when their bones could no longer hold them, their muscles no longer move them. 

He’s been fighting this war for five years. He has slept under stars and jets flying overhead, and listened to the moan of men in agony. He’s watered French soil with his blood, with the blood of his enemies, with the blood of men he was responsible for. He’d passed rivers of the dead floating downstream, seen vultures swarm battlefields, seen human bodies in every moment of death and decay. He’s buried his fair share of them.

His days in Paris seem like a dream. Something beautiful, something make-believe. He had been so happy, David at his side, smiling his sunshine smile, but it had been an illusion.

This is his life. This. Gun oil under his fingernails, dirt and sweat crusted around his neck, his belly empty and his feet aching. The reel of suffering never-ending behind his eyes. This is all he’d lived for so long that there is nothing else.

They’re going to find Eli, because Patrick has nothing left in this world. And then Patrick is going to go home, to Canada, no matter what he has to do to get there, and live out the remainder of his days trying to forget. 

Heather doesn’t say anything else. Doesn’t expect conversation from him. He’s grateful, even as she squeezes his shoulder, even as she goes back to the men. He needs to be alone for a little while, just a little while, to keep himself together. To keep himself moving forward. 

* 

Turns out the information that the 53rd Fusiliers have is six weeks out of date and about as helpful as a bunch of needles hidden in a small haystack: villages, ten of them, nestled in the hills and valleys back and forth over the French and German border. They zigzag and loop and don’t seem to follow any particular pattern other than starting about seventeen miles due east from Station Marvaille. It makes Patrick supremely glad for his team that the Colonel has a spare convoy for them to take, although once they offload at Walschbronn, they’ll be on foot from there. 

It’s long, arduous work, and even after their standoff at Rurange-lès-Thionville Patrick doesn’t feel that either side of his group is prepared for the work ahead: the pocket squares for the boring, monotonous work of being a soldier and himself for being able to take care of his responsibilities outside the pervasive, ever-present nightmares of David’s death and Eli’s continued evasion. 

It takes them a few more days to make the final cross back into Germany. They’re down to their last two options, and if they don’t find Eli in Roppeviller or Eppenbrunn, they’re back at square one. Less than square one. Which means Patrick can feel that familiar press of pressure behind his temples, a little bit harder with every passing minute of the day. It’s like getting to the last few pieces of a jigsaw puzzle and realizing they might not fit — and not knowing where in the 500 pieces you’ve made a mistake. 

Patrick glances through the binoculars one last time, just to be sure, before he waves them all forward, up and out of the grassy ditch they’d been walking in and across the road. Patrick knows from the updates he’s been able to pick up that the German line has been pushed back so far from the border region, he doesn’t really need to worry about running into any stray contingents here. But old habits die hard, and they’re still a group of Allied forces sneaking into Axis territories, so even though they’re so incredibly tired of searching, he makes sure they remain in file, walking softly, keeping their eyes and ears open as they approach Roppeviller. 

From the moment they walk past the small, wooden sign proclaiming the name and population of the town, Patrick can tell that something about this time is different. It’s a thrill up his spine that has no rational explanation — these buildings are just as burnt out as all the rest have been, the village as abandoned, the atmosphere as broken. But as they turn towards the charred frame of the first house they pass, Patrick can almost taste it on the air, the knowledge that they may have finally found what they’re looking for.

It becomes a cemented fact in the third house, where they find a cache of marble statuettes in the attic that makes Dr. Warner’s eyes light up in the exact same way David’s had when he’d realized where they were, just over the bridge in Bougival, and Patrick is more than happy to leave her and Ertlinger to the task of organizing and cataloging the find while he goes outside and calls in their coordinates to the nearest outpost. The response back from the 1st Free French Division is fuzzy, and Patrick’s French is as terrible as ever, but Patrick is pretty sure the answer he gets back refers to a nearby regiment, and a three hour time window for arrival. 

In the fifth house they visit, Patrick counts no fewer than four trunk-sized wooden crates, packed full of stretched, dark-painted canvases that Patrick doesn’t recognize but that bring immediate tears to Geljo’s eyes and evokes a whispered, “Sweet Jesus,” from Art. “Are those _all_ Chagalls?”

Geljo just nods and licks his lips and Patrick leaves them to whatever treasure trove it is they’ve just stumbled upon. He, Dr. Butani, and Morrison are just across the threshold of the last house when they hear it — the sounds of something alive, coming from somewhere inside the house. The noises are too deep, too intentional, to be attributed to the scattering of rats or racoons, and Patrick knows — _knows_ — in the pit of his gut that he’s standing on the landing of another great door of change in his life. 

He motions for Morrison and Dr. Butani to sweep downstairs, while he’ll take the upper floor, and Morrison glowers at him like the last thing he wants to do is split up. But Dr. Butani can’t be left unguarded, and Patrick sure as shit isn’t going to take him with him when his fingers are itching to pull at the butt of his Colt and cock one into the chamber. He gives his order again, low and clipped, even in whisper: “Downstairs sweep, Morrison. Back to front, pistol out. We’ll reconvene here on the landing with the all-clear. If you find anything, shout, if you find anyone…” Patrick lets his voice trail off. Both of them remember what happened with the German soldiers at Rurange-lès-Thionville. 

“You’ll be alright, sir?” It’s the question they’re not supposed to ask because it’s a question without a winning answer, no matter what he says Patrick will be made a liar or a fool.

“Don’t ask stupid questions, Morrison. Go on, and keep Dr. Butani squarely behind you.”

“Oh, that won’t be a problem Captain Brewer,” Dr. Butani says, his smile wide but his eyes full of an uneasy fear. 

Patrick nods and claps both men on the shoulder before pushing past them and pulling his pistol out its place nestled against his upper thigh. He crouches lower, eliminating the broadest target on his body, and makes his way up the first flight of stairs. 

This house is one of the least-burned ones in town, but there are still sections of stairway charred or missing entirely. Patrick eases open the two doors that make up the top floor and find them ransacked, but empty. One has an upturned mattress in one corner, a wardrobe of clothes overturned and emptied in the other. The shards of a beautiful porcelain washbowl crack gently under Patrick’s feet. It was a beautiful room once, and Patrick aches with a sense of loss for something he can’t name, so large and outside himself that if he gives into it now, it’ll send him to his knees. And he can’t afford that, not if he’s going to follow that little fishhook pull behind his belly button that sends him into the other room. 

This must have been a personal library, or office, the floor covered with nothing but bent books, their spines cracked, and their pages loosed like confetti around the space while their shelves stand empty around the room. There’s a large mahogany desk, from which all the drawers have been removed for some reason, and Patrick starts kicking over books with the toes of his boot when a wave of defeat overtakes him. There’s no one in this room, either, and there’s been no signal from Morrison, and they’ve come so close and yet are so far, and. There’s still that feeling in his gut, a scratch at the back of his skull that won’t leave him alone. 

There’s nothing here. 

He sinks onto the edge of the desk and drops his head down, chin on his chest. He’s so interminably tired, and he can feel the constant heat of his rage towards Eli dimming a bit. He’s starting to think that this is something he’ll have to spend the rest of his life living with, this gnawing sense of injustice and anger that are shaped like a man he’s never seen, but whose name has done more to shape the course of his life than perhaps any other. He doesn’t know how long he’ll be able to carry on a life like that, where he has to nurse a small, hateful, spiteful creature like that inside him for the rest of time. 

He sighs and lets his eyes close, pressing his fingers into the underside of the wood, using the small cracks and knots he feels to ground himself when — _click._ Patrick’s eyes fly open and he hears it behind him, the small release of a gear, the small shuffle of a lock, and hope swells in his chest before he turns around to see the bookshelf behind him sticking out at the smallest angle to the wall. If Patrick hadn’t heard what he’d heard, he doubt he’d be able to tell the difference, but given that he _had_ — Patrick wraps his hand tighter around the barrel of his Colt and approaches the shelf silently, easing it open with his shoulder and biting down hard on the inside of his cheek to stifle the thrilled little gasp when he sees the outlines of an unlit staircase rising above him. 

And for all that Patrick has been imagining this moment, it still stabs at him freshly when he reaches the top of the stair and finds himself standing in the middle of a bare attic, filled to the brim with more suitcase-sized transport boxes, leather file-folds filled with prints and books and metal casting plates — even Patrick can see that there’s more here for them to catalog than anything else they’ve run across so far. 

And he doesn’t give a damn about any of it. 

Because sitting in the middle, wrapped in a quilt that must have been stolen from the bedroom below, is a raggedy looking man in a designer-cut suit with the kind of salt-and-pepper hair that Patrick had once thought David might grow into one day. 

At the thought of David, the reality of where he’s at, who he’s looking at, who’s looking back at him, all slap him across his face again and he lets out a sound that’s like the opposite of a gasp. It’s not like Patrick’s forgotten. There hasn’t been a single moment since he walked out on a sleeping David that he hasn’t thought about the kind of justice that needs to be served to a man like Eli Hoffman, a man who takes and takes with such blatant disregard for how many people he hurts along the way. 

But somewhere along the hundreds of miles they’d searched for Eli, the sense had begun to dull for Patrick, had begun to mix and mingle with the other outrages and injustices they saw at every new village they encountered. 

Seeing Eli here, squirreled away with the spoils of his evil, reignites Patrick’s rage with an intensity he’s not prepared for as he charges at the man, who recoils and presses himself into a pile of crates. He’s sitting on the floor looking at Patrick like he’s a wounded dog, scared for his life. Patrick imagines that same hurt in David’s eyes and has his gun cocked before the first question is out of his mouth.

“Eli Hoffman?”

“Y-yes.”

“You’re officially being placed under capture by the MFAA, pursuant to allegations of money laundering, smuggling, and other war crimes. Are you willing to come peaceably with me now?” It’s not an option he deserves, and Patrick pushes the practiced words out through clenched teeth. 

“What? Why?” The confusion on his face is so genuine, it stops Patrick short. How can Eli possibly not understand what’s happening?

“You’re the Eli Hoffman who served as financial advisor to several well-known Hollywood families, who for the last two years has been working to smuggle paintings for the Reich?”

“No! Well. Yes, to the first part, but. No!" 

Patrick uses his gun to gesture at the collected artwork around them. “And what do you call all this? And the stashes my teammates are currently working on cataloging as we speak?” 

Eli swallows and licks his lips and his eyes dart between Patrick’s gun and his surroundings. He holds up his hands. “Please let me explain. I took these paintings, yes. I had to.”

“You _had_ to loot the humanistic and artistic from a war-torn country for profit?” Patrick’s eyebrow quirks and his tone is acidic. 

For the first time, Eli looks more frustrated than scared, and the way he sucks his teeth burns at Patrick’s cheeks like fire. He pushes half a step forward, redirects his gun’s attention to Eli, the fear back in his eyes. “I didn’t loot them. God, please sir. I did what I could to save these wonderful and important maligned artworks. The SS would have burned them, otherwise.” 

“Which explains why you’re with them, here, and not turning them in to an Allied field office, right?” 

“Field office? Please, I’m not a military man, I only did what I knew best.” 

And it’s another nail for Eli’s coffin, even if he doesn’t see it, because — of course he did. Eli had only done what creatures like Eli do, and there is no saving or rectifying or apologizing for a creature that follows its true nature. A lion in a rage doesn’t apologize for eating the gazelle, but that doesn’t mean the lion tamer lets it continue. They’ve gotten what they’ve come for — all this art will be restored, repaired, returned to the homes and museums from which they were taken — and there won’t be a single soul to shed a tear for Eli Hoffman. 

Patrick is a man of values. A man with an unshakable moral compass, though that moral compass didn’t always align with the traditional sense of good and evil. 

Patrick wishes it didn’t feel so good to watch the way the skin of Eli’s forehead indents around the barrel of his gun, the way Eli’s pupils both slide inward to focus on the cool black metal where it presses between his eyes. 

“This isn’t legal,” Eli whispers in a desperate attempt to save his own life. 

“By who’s metric, Mr. Hoffman? You work for men who slaughter women and children in the street, who lock churches and burn entire congregations, who bomb entire cities and pick off innocent civilians trying to live.” 

Eli’s eyes dart back and forth, an animal who knows it’s about to die. “Please. _Please._ You don’t have to do this.”

The bile comes up in the back of his throat, and he can’t tell if it’s adrenaline or joy or disgust. He can picture it so perfectly, pressing the trigger, enough that it squeezes the air out of his lungs as he—

“Captain!”

He doesn’t move his eyes from Eli. Doesn’t so much as twitch a muscle. “Turn around and walk away, Private.”

“No, sir,” Morrison whispers, edging into view in the corner of his vision. “Please, sir. Please put the gun down.” 

“I can’t do that,” Patrick replies quietly, sweat slicking his spine, the back of his neck. He’s calm. So calm. He’s never been more calm in his entire fucking life. All he can see, hear, is Eli Hoffman. His panicked eyes, jerking between Patrick’s gun and the door. Sitting like a king here in his horde of treasures. 

Morrison is young, but there’s an authority that surprises Patrick when he says, his voice even, “Sir, the 1st Free French Division is here. They said you called the coordinates in. They asked to speak with command.”

“That’s me,” Patrick says, and has never been more sure in his life that killing this man in cold blood would be the right choice, would save lives in the long run. Just as sure is his certainty that if he does, Patrick will lose David’s love and the chance to clear his name once and for all. It will start him down a road he has watched men around him take, dark roads to darker places. He never thought he’d find himself here, at these crossroads. 

He’s panting and his mind is racing and all he can do is feel the cool metal in his hand, slowly warming with the heat of his body, and the tension in his legs as he fights the desire to pull the trigger, send hot pieces of lead into Eli’s body, to shred his heart the way he’d shredded Patrick’s, and to have the guts to look him in the face while he does it. The want for revenge claws at Patrick’s throat like a thirst, and he’s watching his chance at a drink slip through his fingers. 

“Captain,” Morrison says again, taking a step towards him with his hands out, like he’s gentling a wild animal, a comparison that Patrick will later realize is not all that far from the truth. “I need you to holster your weapon.”

“That’s not the way this works, Private. You don’t tell me what to do.” 

“You’re acting irrationally, sir.” 

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

“I know it looks like you’re about to shoot an unarmed civilian, Sir, instead of allowing him to be turned over to the brass to stand trial for his crimes. That’s not who you are. You’re — you’re my CO, sir. You kill when you have to, and you bury them afterward, because they’re someone’s father, and brother, and son. That’s what you always say. Our enemies deserve compassion, especially those who can’t give it.”

Gently, and with such care, Morrison drops his voice and reaches out a hand to wrap around Patrick’s wrist, to urge him towards lowering the gun. “Don’t give him the easy way out.”

He looks down at Morrison’s hand, then down, to Eli. The man is whimpering. He’s wet himself, piss in a puddle all around him, clutching the rotten blanket around his shoulders as if it could protect him. 

Everything seems very loud, suddenly. His own rasping breaths; the sound of Morrison’s rough hand on Patrick’s jacket, sliding down to take the gun from him. Eli’s weeping, and the old creaking house as it settles and groans, joints popping like an old man’s.

He looks up, past Eli, to the attic window. The French countryside goes on for miles and miles, early afternoon sunshine casting gold light on the long grass swaying with the cool April breeze, the trees with new spring leaves, the birds chirping to one another. The creek sparkles like a jewel. It reminds him of home, of Sheppard Hill, of playing with his cousins and his dog, Pepper. Pepper because of her speckled coat, and her big, joyous, deep bark. He hasn’t thought of Pepper in so many years, but he thinks of her now, wonders if David would like a dog, and what kind, and the shape of a life where David has a dog and Patrick has a dog but neither of them have each other.

He looks down at Morrison, and lets go of the gun. 

He feels the sun on his face. He’s outside, and doesn’t quite know how he got there. There are people speaking to him, he can hear their voices, but all he can see is the creek, the trees in the distance. He wants to be near that cool water, sit under those trees and listen to the birds. If he closes his eyes he can almost imagine it, the shade of the tree cool on his face, the sound of the water as it flows by. 

“Captain.”

He looks up. Heather. Dr. Warner. 

He’s sitting in the middle of the field. He doesn’t know how he got here.

She kneels down next to him, her dark curls tumbling out of her bun in the wind, and takes his hand. She has very small hands, petite hands, lovely and hardworking hands. He’d watched her tend to Geljo, had watched her handle a weapon. Such a strong woman. 

He thinks he should say it, so he does. “I didn’t.”

“I know.”

“The art is there. Not a lot of it. Some.”

“I know that too,” she replies, and squeezes his hand. 

“I didn’t kill him.”

She says, “No, you didn’t,” more gently than he deserves, and touches his face with care. It’s a maternal touch, gentle fingertips on his cheek, and he closes his eyes to it for a moment.

They sit together and watch the creek, the way the sun catches against the tiny waves of water, the birds who swoop down to have their fill of the insects at its banks. It smells of summer, like growing things and grass and trees, of sunshine on his skin.

This is the end for him. He cannot take one more step in the Army. He has fought and killed and seen his men die in front of him, has seen blood and carnage and the degradation human beings could mete out to one another. He has witnessed untold suffering, and has suffered himself, and he can’t take one single moment more of it. He can’t take any more.

“I want to go home,” he says, quietly. 

“I know you do,” Heather replies, just as quietly. 

*

The jolt of plane wheels hitting tarmac jolts him awake, but he doesn’t open his eyes until the sudden and rapid application of the brakes presses him back into his seat, almost holding him in place for a second. It’s the lightest he’s felt in over a month, since final word came down about the signing on board the USS Missouri, the last surrenders, the end of the war that’s taken his entire life and left him nothing but a barely beating heart inside a frame of bone and flesh. 

In the time since Dr. Warner cupped Patrick’s cheek and he’d said his ultimate truth out loud, Patrick has spent the majority of his time asleep, or walking through life so removed from any sense of feeling that he might as well be. People speak to him, and it takes him half a minute to respond; he tells his body to stand and move across the room and it takes him so long to get there that by the time he is, he’s forgotten why he bothered. He doesn’t sleep, not that he ever did, and when he does all his dreams are replaced by one constant, plummeting sensation of falling into a thick, deep pool of a navy blue liquid so dark he can’t see through it. 

He wakes from those dreams feeling more tired than on the nights he doesn’t sleep at all.

Luckily, his seats are in the back of the plane, with the rest of the medical transports, so he’s got plenty of time to get his body and his brain in line with one another by the time he has to stand and make his way out of the plane, across the tarmac, and into the waiting arms of his mother and Rachel.

He doesn’t cry, hasn’t cried since he dropped the revolver from his hand, but he leans against his family and smells the wild prairie grasses and sunburnt lavender and yeasty, fresh-baked smell that is a combination of the two people in his life who have always loved him, no matter what they’ve known of him. Well. Two of three people, and the only two he’ll get. 

He’s long since made peace with what happened, since they arrived back at Station Marvaille only for Patrick to sink into a darkness so deep he ends up in a med bay, unable to eat, or sleep, or respond to questions, cajoling, orders. He sits there and feels the wheels of his mind turn, but somewhere along the rotation they get lost and he remembers the way the blueberries in his mother’s pie would burst and burn along the bottom of her oven, or the way human blood starts to feel tacky when it cools between your fingers, or the sound of David’s laugher off the tile in their bathroom at the Gaston. 

When he’s awake, the world is too bright and too loud for him to keep his eyes open long, and when night comes and he’s supposed to be asleep, the snakes in his head come alive wearing the face of Eli, of his mother, of Mr. Rose, who he’s never even seen, and David, who he’ll never see again. He sits up to eat, and he must, the plate is empty and a nurse is smiling at him, and because he isn’t dead yet, but he has no memory of chewing, or tasting. His hair stays relatively clean, the flowers by his bed kept fresh, someone sits him up, or walks him around, or reads to him from the paper, every day. 

When Colonel Travis comes looking for Patrick, he finds him in bed, staring out the window as the rain pours outside. He doesn’t do well with rain, can’t quite remember all the details of why in the fog that drowns his mind, but feels the press of a warm body against him, hears the clap of thunder and thinks of windmills. Colonel Travis walks him through his honorable medical discharge, the reassignment of his unit, the success of their pursuant searches for Göring and Gurlitt. The only thing Patrick takes away from the meeting is a handshake and a single word echoing in his mind: _home._

He’s going home. Sooner, rather than later. Home to Canada, to his mother and his grandfather and Sunday dinners and...what? A job, surely, but. Doing what? He’d told David he’d want to manage his business, deal with the paperwork and financial operations and. He doesn’t know if that’s what he wants to do, or would even be able to do without the love and power of David’s vision behind it, but maybe he could try. What else were his options, and the idea of finding success in the alignment of clearly delineated boxes was more appealing to him now than ever. 

But — what else? What else is there? He tries to imagine it, a day spent at a nine-to-five job, shirtsleeves and sportcoats, nights spent reading books, seeing movies, finding a woman to court and settle down with. It’s this last one he has the most trouble with, the way it slices through him, the closest thing he’s felt to pain in months, and he tries to swallow around it and force it down like bitter medicine. 

Because the truth is he has no idea what to do. The six days in Paris and six months that had come after it had combined to erase the thirty-odd years that had come before it and how he’s on the brink of a new world, in a world that stands on the brink of a new age, and he has no idea how to put the pieces of a new life together. He’s not even sure he has all the pieces, not sure he didn’t leave the cornerstone asleep on silk sheets in a gorgeous Parisian hotel. 

Whatever the answer is, though, he’s one of the lucky ones who gets to figure it out, at home.

He straightens back up and his mother cups both of his cheek in her hands, pressing a kiss right between his eyebrows. She looks older, her dark hair showing clear streaks of grey, the circles under her eyes deeper. And when she speaks, he doesn’t think it’s just the press of tears that makes her voice sound heavy, if full of all the love he’s missed. 

“Welcome home, my sweet boy.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Citations Used Writing This Fic: 
> 
> [Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives Program](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monuments,_Fine_Arts,_and_Archives_program)
> 
> [The Devil and the Art Dealer](https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2014/04/degenerate-art-cornelius-gurlitt-munich-apartment)
> 
> [Nazi Plunder](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_plunder)
> 
> Black Lives Matter Resources:
> 
> [Ways You Can Help from Black Lives Matter](https://blacklivesmatters.carrd.co/)
> 
> [The Bail Project ](bailproject.org)
> 
> [A List of Reading Lists](https://twitter.com/victoriaalxndr/status/1266829408268095493?s=20)
> 
> [BLM Resource Guide](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Oh6BuEqhU9y1Zrpp4Z8vVQNDYYjSB_MJTNu18PaAGls/mobilebasic)
> 
> Veteran's Mental Health Resources:
> 
> [VA Mental Health Services](https://www.mentalhealth.va.gov/)
> 
> [Veterans Families United](https://veteransfamiliesunited.org/mental-health-resources/)
> 
> [The Wounded Warrior Project](https://www.woundedwarriorproject.org/programs/wwp-talk)


	9. Chapter Nine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hang in there, friends. One more left. To all of you who've been reading along: thank you. To all of you reading later, in one go: thank you.
> 
> Black lives matter, defund the police, drink water and be kind to each other.

It’s Alexis that pulls David back into himself. 

She starts by leaving him a cup of coffee by his bed in the morning, every day, from the first day after Stevie shows him the newspaper. He hears them fighting about it the night before that first cup shows up on his nightstand, black and steaming. The walls are thin enough, he can hear Stevie’s hushed insistence to let him be, his sister’s quiet but firm insistence that _she knows what she’s doing._ And he _wants_ to say something to her when the door opens and he hears the light, fluttering sound of her thin metal bracelets clacking together. But his throat is so dry, and his head is so fuzzy, by the time he’s put together a semblance of something he wants to say, she’s gone again.

The next day, she leaves a nail file, the day after that a small glass jar of his favorite lotion, smelling of sandalwood and sea mist. His favorite silver watch, somehow retained in the seizure, and then a pair of sunglasses, round and white and fabulous, the pair of hers he’s spent the most time coveting. He doesn’t do anything with any of it, but he sees it there, and it helps stitch back together something inside of him. 

What gets him out of bed, finally, is the chilling realization that he is truly his mother’s son. As a boy he never understood how she could hide herself in closets for days on end, wailing and carrying on about this bad review, and that missed opportunity. David had always thought he was made of stronger stuff, but that was before his life collapsed inwards on itself, before it's foundation lay in ruins at his feet. 

He stares at himself, for the first time in a very long time, in the mirror of the tiny ensuite bathroom. He’s lost weight. He hasn’t done his skincare regime in months. His hair is long, his beard is longer. He has enormous dark marks under his eyes, and he’s pale as the sheets he’d been lying on.

He looks awful. Like a man brought to the brink of destruction. Like heartbreak realized. Like Moira Rose, after a week hiding in her closet.

It takes him longer than he wants it to, but he bathes. Brushes his hair, brushes his teeth. He shaves, though the stubble will be back by mid-day, and there’s nothing that can be done about his hair, though Stevie may be able to cut it for him. He is careful about his skincare routine, applying his oils as precisely as he can, but it will be weeks before some of the dark marks have faded, if they ever will. 

The rooms to either side of him are empty. His parents are off doing only God knew what, but he thinks he hears Alexis’s voice, and he ventures outside.

The office to the office is open, and Stevie is saying, “— don’t understand what you’re not getting, Alexis,” in that annoyed tone she only gets to when she’s truly gotten to the end of her rope.

“Rolling up doesn’t make any sense,” Alexis replies, shrill and piercing in his ears. He sways to a stop in the doorway, and doesn’t quite know what he’s looking at for a long moment.

The interior of the inn’s office is as shabby as the rest of the place, left to mold without the proper care. But the window blinds have been removed, and bright summer sunshine is coming through the only slightly foggy glass. Enormous piles of disgusting flowered wallpaper are heaped by the doorway. Alexis and Stevie have laid out tarps, and are painting the walls, each in speckled coveralls that speak to the amount of work they’ve been putting into the place while David has been trying to remember how to breathe. 

“Son!”

The girls whip around, but it’s too late. His father is standing beside him, carrying two new gallons of paint, smiling so broadly David can see all his teeth. It isn’t often his Dad smiles like that, more prone to the crooked grins that David inherited. “How are you feeling?”

He doesn’t know what to say. The answer may not be something he wants to hear. Or maybe he does, David doesn’t really know.

His father looks tired. Worried. But there’s something loose in his shoulders, something warm in his face, that David has never quite seen before. 

He looks back at Alexis and Stevie, at the two of them, frozen, as if scared they’d startle him and send him scampering back into the trees. It annoys him, mostly because they’re not wrong — he wants to curl his head back down to his pillow and forget that he ever got up this morning — but also because he doesn’t want to be the hothouse orchid his mother is, incapable of surviving outside her perfectly crafted and controlled world. He wants to be stronger than that. He needs to be stronger than that. 

“I’m hungry,” he tries, instead.

A flurry of action. Stevie sets the paintbrushes down, Alexis sweeps her hair up out of her face with a kerchief. Even his father plunks the paint gallons down right there on the sidewalk, and David has a moment to realize how much these people care for him, though he’s done nothing to warrant it.

They go to the cafe. David doesn’t remember much of the walk there, only the conversation as it flows around him, the girls talking about all the improvements they’ve started making to the inn, his father chiming in with, “It sure needs work, but there’s something there.” It’s odd, to hear his father so excited about something, because he doesn’t think his father has ever been excited about _anything._ His father has always been the successful publisher, the man most comfortable in boardrooms and his high rise office in New York City, but apparently there’s something to be said about working with your hands on a decrepit roadside inn that would be better demolished than repaired. His father is tanned from working in the sun, and though there are a half-dozen new worry lines fanning out from each corner of his eyes, he doesn’t look as miserable as David thought he’d be. 

He studies his father from behind his sunglasses as they find a booth, as Mutt comes over with the menus and his perennial scowl. They’re not talking at him so much as around him, _with_ him, encouraging him to be a part of the conversation but never pushing. 

_It’s because they care about you._

He looks down at the menu without really seeing it, made twice as difficult by the fact that there’s just so MUCH of it to see, and brushes the backs of his fingers under the sunglasses. Alexis pulls their menus up a little bit and squeezes his bicep. He can’t look at her, but it’s enough to cover her hand with his, in thank you.

He eats. Food still tastes like ash around his grief, but he recognizes that he needs to eat, to nourish himself and keep going. He doesn’t know why, precisely, and when he pokes at it the wound flares, sends shards of pain through his heart. 

_You know why,_ his mind whispers. 

Patrick. Patrick would want him to keep going. To get up and get dressed and eat and talk to people, to put on his mask and keep going. But Patrick thought he was in New York, safe behind his family’s money, living in his highrise with the world an oyster at his feet. Patrick doesn’t know what’s become of him, that he has found himself in a roadside inn in rural Canada, living wall to wall with his parents and his best friend, surviving off of Stevie’s generosity.

He has nothing left to his name but the integrity he’d been so sure had been worth it, the last time he saw Eli in his Parisian office.

A month ago, the thought would have been enough to send him back into the dark. It threatens to even now, except his father is saying something with mirth bright in his crooked smile, and Alexis and Stevie are both laughing, and David wonders. 

He looks past them, to the windows of the cafe. To the life outside, people walking with their children, and birds flying from tree to tree in the oaks that line the avenue. To the store that has been sitting vacant since they got here.

He can picture it. That store. _His_ store. The red brick facade cleaned, a new sign out front. Plants in the windows, produce in stands outside. Beautiful wood finishes, and penny candy at the till, ladies buying their goods and men smoking pipes at the door. A general store, but a specific store. 

Patrick. There with him, with that bright, broad smile, mischief on his mouth and joy in his eyes. The smile David only ever saw once, the night he took him to _Le Lido_. 

To miss someone — Christ, David had written the playbook. He’s spent his life missing people, missing the way they made him feel, missing the things they did for him. But this missing, this longing, is different. His sadness is so deep that it’s like a river through a mountain range, carving its way through his heart, making room for itself in the furrows of muscle and rewriting the topography of his being. This is sadness he’ll never be free of. 

He doesn’t want to be free of it.

He got up today. He bathed, and shaved, and ate. It’s enough.

He stands and leaves his family behind. They don’t call after him, and he’s grateful. 

When he passes the shuttered door of the vacant store, he sways to a stop, and stares inside for a long time. 

*

Time ceases to matter after a certain point; what does it matter what day of the week it is when they all look the same? David starts to measure his life in different markings: the number of days he’s able to go between shaves (two for himself, four before Stevie say something about contacting the mutual aid society), the accrual rate of dust on the pale wooden shelves of a store sitting empty, the increasing intensity of the feeling that everyone else in his family is setting down roots, forming a solidity to this new life that continues to escape David.

He feels ephemeral, and he hates it. 

So one day, he picks up a paintbrush to give his arm something to do. Stevie and Alexis are in the next room, practically shrieking with laughter, and they’d asked him to come back to the office to fetch them all a pitcher of lemonade, but — there’s a streak of bare wall near the top, where neither girl is tall enough to reach, that they’ve been saving for when they borrow Mutt’s ladder. David is tall enough to reach it, and there’s a small cup of paint sitting vacant, and what else is there to do with paint but...paint with it. 

And it feels good. Rhythmic. Calming. He finishes one wall more quickly than he’d have thought, so he keeps going. He finishes the walls of the room and takes a deep breath, looking up at the smooth, newly painted deep green walls and feels the smallest spark of something deep inside his chest, so fresh it hurts, poking him enough that he stops looking at the wall and turns around to find Stevie and his sister in the doorway, staring at him.

“You painted,” his sister says, like he’d carried a pig bareback up a mountain or something. 

“I finished your touch-ups, someone had to,” he says back, and it’s not sassy, not exactly. But it’s the closest he’s come since the day he’d woken up in this God forsaken place, and it feels comfortable and warm, like an old coat he’s stepping into. If the smile on his sister’s face is any indication, she’s just as thrilled about the retort as he is. 

“What do you think of the color,” Stevie asks, and she’s taunting him, because she knows he’s going to hate it — it’s the color of the outdoors, a deep copse of trees, so green it’s almost black, only. He doesn’t hate it at all. He kind of loves it, actually, for the aesthetic of the space they're trying to create. And the fact that the word ‘aesthetic’ floats through his brain gives him more hope than any morning hike he’d ever taken with Stevie. It feels like a homecoming that’s truly his. 

“I love it,” he says sincerely, setting the paintbrush back in the cup, not even pretending not to see the surprised little smiles the two girls share. “What? It’s very...huntsman lodge. It works, with the trees and the nature and the…” he waves towards the world outside the inn, and Stevie nods knowingly. 

“Yeah, yeah. The nature, of course,” she smirks at him. “Your sister and I were just getting ready to take a break and go get lunch, did you want to join us?”

He nods, and the three make their way out of the inn together, walking down the street three abroad with David in the middle, and it’s nice. The sun is warm on his face, and while he’s still too afraid to look right at it, he thinks he might be feeling the first inkling of something that looks an awful lot like an idea. 

“What’ll it be,” Mutt calls to them from behind the counter, forever the paragon of customer service, and Alexis rolls her eyes before walking up to the counter to order for them all while Stevie and David slide into their now customary booth. 

“You look better today,” Stevie says quietly, leaning into his shoulder. He quirks up the corner of his mouth — now that he’s sitting, he feels tired again, but the small ache the act of painting had put into his shoulder and his neck is nice, a warm, grounding thing, and it feels like a satisfied kind of tired. The kind of tired that won’t chase him through sleep, leaving him feeling even more exhausted in the morning. 

“I feel...what comes before better?”

“Alive?”

He nods, and a full smile creeps across his face. “Let’s not get cocky. Half-alive, maybe.”

Alexis slides into the booth, a plate of fries in her hands. “Mutt’s going to bring the rest. Who’s half-alive?”

“Your brother,” Stevie says, snapping a fry off the plate and biting through it with a click of her teeth. 

“Oh. Good,” Alexis says, nodding and taking a bite of her own french fry. “Half-alive is so much better than all this...moping.”

“Alexis,” Stevie says, a note of warning in her voice, and Alexis rolls her eyes.

“Fine, fine. I know, it’s only that,” she makes eye contact with David from underneath her eyelashes, “well, really David. You can’t just Miss Havisham your way through life, you know. If that GI of yours doesn’t know what he had —” Stevie hisses and David can feel the blood drain from his face, and his hands press flat into the surface of the table, his knuckles going white. Alexis presses her lips together and sits back, letting silence fill the space. 

When she speaks again, her voice is small. “I’m sorry, I just mean that you’re my brother is all. And I know we haven’t always been what some would call _close._ ”

Stevie snorts and Alexis and David both shoot her a glare. She holds up her hands in surrender and eats another fry with a muttered, “sorry.”

“I still think that you deserve better than rotting away in the dark corner of a rundown — soon to be restored! — hotel,” Alexis continues. “And anyone who can’t give you that isn’t worth a pot to piss in,” she says, her voice resolute and as angry as David’s maybe ever heard her.

He reaches out for her hand, taking it across the table and squeezing it tightly. He doesn’t know what to say, and he knows that his normal channels of communication are all lined in barbs of sarcasm, so he keeps his mouth shut and just smiles at her, hoping she can feel every ounce of the gratitude he possesses for her in this moment. 

Mutt approaches the table and slides their plates in front of them with a grunt. David takes the ketchup and passes the mustard to his sister. Stevie takes a bite of her pickle and uses the bitten-off spear to gesture at David. “For what it’s worth, I think you make a _gorgeous_ Miss Havisham.” 

“You both need to never call me that again,” he says, adding a sprinkle of salt and pepper to his ketchup. “Patr—,” David chokes on the name and takes a deep breath before he tries again. “He and I, it was…” 

How could he possibly describe what he and Patrick had been given the chance to have? That it had felt — still feels — like he’d been given a glimpse of the rest of his life? Someone had fallen in love with him, not for his money, his name, or his connections, but for _him,_ David Rose, the broken man behind the glittering mask. 

Patrick, feeling out who he was, terrified and so _goddamned_ brave. A kind soul.

“Everything was so much clearer. Everything made _sense,_ ” David says, and his eyes go wet and hot. “Why people are so happy, why people get married, why people make art and write love songs. I’ve never felt like that in my life. I thought I was broken. But I _wasn’t,_ Alexis. I just need Patrick to come along and be the color in the painting that made it all make sense, you know?”

“David,” Alexis whispers.

“It isn’t moping. I _do_ feel like Miss Havisham,” David says, choked with grief. “We were given six days, and it has to be enough, _it has to be,_ because that’s all we’ll ever have. But my heart,” and the sob shakes out of him like a leaf falling from a tree, “it isn’t _listening._ ”

Stevie winds her skinny arms around him, and Alexis squeezes his hand, and David ducks his head away, so angry and embarrassed and heartbroken. “I don’t want to feel like this anymore,” he gasps out, and Alexis makes a quiet whimpering sound he hates. “I don’t want to be sad anymore. But I can’t stop. I don’t know how to make it _stop._ ”

“Time will heal it,” Stevie says, rubbing his back as Alexis presses paper napkins into his hand. “Time, David. And doing what you’re doing now, going out to eat food, and helping us paint, and washing your face and putting on clothes. You’re already doing what you need to do. You just have to ride it through.”

He squeezes his eyes shut, shards of pain burning his throat, his chest. “I don’t want to forget him.”

“You won’t. He’s the beautiful GI you met in Paris. The man you fell in love with,” Stevie says, brushing her fingers gently along his cheek, where the hot trail of salt had curved down his jaw. “We’re here for you, you know that, right?”

Somehow, against all odds, he did know that. His flighty sister, and his firecracker of a best friend, set against the backdrop of this rural town. Farmland every which way, and the train tracks running parallel to the creek, and the horses and cows and wheat rustling in the wind and David Rose, at odds with the pastoral perfection all around him. His new life. A square peg for a round hole.

“I know,” he says, and Stevie squeezes his hand and urges him to eat. 

They’re walking back towards the inn, the sunshine warm between his shoulder blades, when his feet just sort of...stop walking outside the general store. They’ve been doing that more and more lately, damn near every time he passes it, and part of him knows _why,_ but the better, more rational part of himself doesn’t know what he wants out of all the looking. 

“David?” Alexis and Stevie had made it another half a dozen steps before realizing he wasn’t still with them, and they were both looking at him with different variants of the same underlying surprise — Alexis’s genuine, Stevie’s cutting. “What are you doing,” his sister asks.

“Nothing. Just. Looking.”

“At the general store,” Stevie’s got a single eyebrow cocked and she’s looking at David that makes him feel seen in a way no one else has ever quite accomplished. Well. _Almost_ no one. 

“Yes, at the general store. It’s just what happened to be here.”

“Here. In the middle of the sidewalk. Where you were so overcome with the need for respite, you had a brief, what, standing nap? And it just happened to be in front of the general store?”

He makes a rude gesture in her direction that earns him a scowl from Stevie and a squeal from his sister. But they both smile and join him in the looking. 

The large panes of glass are covered in dust, but it’s a solidly built brick building, black-wood paneling surrounding the front windows and passing over the front door. Inside, as far as they can see, there’s a jumble of old shelving, drop cloths, abandoned wooden crates, an antique brass cash register — the detritus of the store that had once tried so valiantly to exist there. 

It’s nothing like the dream he’d created with Patrick. It’s leagues and miles away from sand and stone, from well-tended and hand-crafted local artisanry that made people feel at home in a way they miss. But if David closes his eyes, he thinks maybe...in the faintest outlines, the mere shimmer of oil across a pool of water…he can see it. That place. Here, in this new life, something he builds with his own two hands as a lasting, concrete reminder of six amazing days and the one person who never once hesitated to believe in any dream David had. 

If he can’t have Patrick, if the universe is set on depriving him of the only thing he’d ever learned to love selflessly, maybe he can have the dream they shared, a consolation prize that might just keep him moored against the angry tides of grief that still rose and fell in his mind. 

“It’s actually sort of perfect,” he says, his voice thick with an emotion he can’t name, too many emotions to name, and Alexis rolls her eyes. 

“Perfect for what David? Dust mites?”

“Perfect for a store,” Stevie answers for him, and smiles slyly at David, who shrugs and puts his hands in his pockets, rocking back on his heels and looking up at the thick, blank expanse of wood above the door. The exact space he’d put a sign, large brass letters visible from the other side of town: _ROSE APOTHECARY._

Just like they’d talked about. A little pretentious, a lot classic, a name that would make him think of the half-moon smile on Patrick’s face. He’d center the name and put one little rose on each end, just in bloom, facing away from the name. Outwards, welcoming, but not fully grown, something still in need of support, of care. Of patronage.

That’s what David would do, if he were going to have a store. Which is a silly, fanciful plan he knows nothing about executing. So he sighs the dream away for another day and loops arms again with Stevie and Alexis, steering them back down the sidewalk towards the hotel. He manages to only look over his shoulder once, the afternoon sun winking back at him bright off the front picture windows. 

*

The store is a dream, unattainable and impractical and _ludicrous._ David has nothing to his name except the clothes he brought with him to Paris, his turntable, and his memories. He’s a heartbroken mess, and the days where he can’t get out of bed still far outnumber the days he can. He knows nothing about taxes, permits, or how rent works. It isn’t possible.

Except.

As David begins to venture out into the world, starts to learn the topography of this unincorporated rural wilderness, starts to meet the people who live here, the idea for Rose Apothecary begins to take root. It’s insidious, the way the ideas sneak under his skin and form, unasked for and yet fully realized, in his mind’s eye. 

He meets Mr. Hockley at the barber-dentist-veterinarian’s office, where he’s finally getting his haircut, and hears all about pesticide-free hothouse growing and chamomile plants indigenous to this corner of Canada. He crosses paths with a woman named Robin at Brebner's Grocery who may be the most dour-faced human being he’s ever met, who tells him about her cat-hair scarves, which she spins and knits herself. The Amish come to town and set up a little tent across from the cafe for two days, selling produce and hand-churned butter, handcrafted hickory rockers and quilts. David watches them for hours, the seriousness of the youngest daughter, the strength of the quiet father. There’s something about them that David finds captivating, these people who dedicate their lives to the craft of simplicity. 

They get inside his head, the simple black cut of their clothes, the way they’re _always_ awake before David is, and _always_ awake long after he goes into his room — he can see the glow lanterns from their tent all the way from his window down the street. He wishes he could find some way to learn more about them, study them in a way that wouldn’t be disconcerting, but he can’t,, so he settles instead for casting them sidelong glances as he walks to breakfast, and talking about them incessantly any time he gets the chance to.

“I just don’t understand why all the black,” he says for the third time in as many hours as he, Stevie, and Alexis climb out of the car in front of the Elmdale Bank and Trust. David agreed to run an errand with Alexis and Stevie, mainly because Stevie had threatened him with an hour of hauling old mattresses out of the bedrooms. He was the only one tall enough to maneuver them down the stairs easily, but the mustiness of the house seemed to _emanate_ from the mattresses, and it had only taken one afternoon for David to never want to put his body anywhere near another one. 

“Mr. Yoder told you,” Alexis murmurs to him as they walk into the bank, their voices automatically lowering in that way human voices always do in banks and libraries. “It’s about modesty and, like, separation from society and all that jazz.” 

They sink into three chairs across from a broad mahogany desk, the man across from them silver-haired and smelling faintly of pine in his pin-striped suit. There’s an acuity in the way he looks at the three of them, and David doesn’t answer Alexis. Suddenly doesn’t want to be heard having that conversation here, where this money man can hear them. David’s skin runs cold, and his buried rage towards Eli threatens to push a tendril through the foundation of his still-forming new life. 

“Ms. Budd, welcome to Elmdale Bank and Trust. My teller, Mr. Currie, tells me you wish to speak with a manager?”

Stevie nods and clicks open her handbag, pulling out a folded piece of paper and sliding it across the desk to the man, whose name plate on his desk reads HOWARD WINSTON in a sharp serif font. “Yes, when I spoke to Mr. Currie last week, he told me I would need to speak to a manager in order to cash this check.”

“Cash a check? I’m sure that won’t be a prob—” the man makes a sound like he’s swallowing his tongue and his eyes go wide, darting back and forth between the paper in his hands and the woman sitting across from him, her dark hair piled high on her head, thin straps of her red sundress digging into her shoulders. She rolls her shoulders back at him and gives him one of those little half-smiles that David has seen wreck far better men in far better suits. 

“What was that, Mr. Winston?”

“This is _quite_ the large sum of money, Ms. Budd.”

“I’m aware of that.”

“And you have no account with us? Or, perhaps…” his eyes flick to David, and a match of glee strikes deep in David’s stomach because, if he’s implying what David thinks he’s implying, Stevie’s reaction will be one for the record books. 

“Perhaps what?”

“Well, you see, it’s just. We have no way of guaranteeing this check, Ms. Budd, against potential fraud, or…” he trails off as the flinty look in Stevie’s eyes refuses to budge. “That is to say, if you would be willing to sign the check over to your fiancé and allow him to cash the check in your name…”

“Oh!” Stevie’s voice perks up. “To him?” She points at David. Mr. Winston visibly relaxes and nods. He leans forward to shake David’s hand. 

“Pleased to meet you, Mr…”

“Henry Lee Moore,” David says smoothly, the laughter inside him worth every long moment of the drive into town, as the man’s face falls and goes a sickly sort of pale green around the edges of his nose and the corner of his mouth. “But you might know me better as the Villisca axe murderer, come to think of it,” he says in the lowest, most calmly menacing voice. Alexis snorts, and Stevie nods gravely as Mr. Winston drops David’s hand. He’s looking back and forth between the three of them, trying to decide how much of what they’re telling him is a joke.

“Mr. Winston?” The man turns to Stevie, his gaze narrowing. “I’m not engaged. This man isn’t an axe murderer. But that check in your hands is very, very real, and while I don’t look forward to the drive to Elm Glen, I’ve already been in touch with them via phone, and they’re more than happy to take my business.”

Mr. Winston swallows thickly and smoothes his hand over the check. “How would you like to receive your funds today, Ms. Budd?”

“Well, Mr. Winston. Your bank currently owns the old general store in the hamlet, right?” David’s gut twists, and he shoots Stevie a narrow, cutting glance. 

Mr. Winston looks at her with hesitation in his eyes. “Property isn’t my department, Ms. Budd, but...yes, I think we’re currently _back_ in possession of that building.”

Stevie nods, beaming. “Perfect! I would like to use this check as a downpayment on the building, please.” Mr. Winston and David’s jaws both drop, and the synchronicity in the movement is almost enough to be funny. “Word through the grapevine is that they’ll be incorporating soon, and every new town needs a good general store, right? Besides, I’m no expert, but certainly that,” she dips her chin towards the check on the table, “should be more than enough?” 

Mr. Winston looks from her, to the check, and back, and clears his throat. He nods, and waves over a colleague, a short man with a rather significant bald spot, and the two begin to pepper with Stevie with questions and toss about numbers like it’s a bingo hall. 

While Mr. Winston and Mr. Henley continue to walk the girls through the terms and conditions of taking the lease, David only has eyes for Stevie, who is gazing at him with so much love that David feels some part of him cave in with despair. To be held in such regard, when he doesn’t _deserve it_ … she can’t do this. David doesn’t know how much the check is for, or where Stevie got it, or why she’s chosen this to be what she does with it, but — she _can’t._

“I can, and I am,” Stevie adds, like she’s reading his mind. “You’ve spent ten years taking care of me. You saved my life, and got me out of France. You kept me from making a terrible mistake with Emir.”

“You don’t owe me anything,” he gasps out, hands shaking, and her smile softens even more, and David can’t tolerate her kindness for even one more second.

It’s Alexis who stands, though, pulling David to his feet with a tug that’s surprisingly strong, considering the way she totters in her wedges. “We’ll be outside waiting for you, Ms. Budd,” she says over her shoulder and she pushes David with a hand firmly in the center of his back, steering his semi-slack body out of the building and down the block to their parking space. Of course, Stevie has the keys, so they lean against the trunk of her car and David’s mind spins. 

He wants to storm back in and stop Stevie, though he’s not quite sure what he would say to do that. He wants to scream at her that if she does this, if she put her money up for his dream, it won’t _really_ be his dream. It will be one more tragic gift from someone who believes in him, just _not quite enough_ to think he can make his own dreams happen. But Stevie isn’t his parents, has never lied to him before about what she thinks of his ideas. And David doesn’t know where else he’s going to get the money, or how long the perfect place will wait for him to find a way to earn it. 

He pulls the cigarette case out of the inside pocket of his jacket and taps the corner of it against his forehead, sharp and metallic and pinprick cold. It feels good, in a way, and he tries to hold on the feeling as he flips the case open and pulls out a cigarette. He snaps it closed and rubs his thumb over the profile of the woman, her face infinitely sadder-seeming now that it’s the only concrete thing David will ever have of Patrick. 

“Do you have a light?” he asks.

“Can I have one of those?” He nods, so she nods, and he takes the slim book of matches from her in the same movement that he passes her the case. “She’s doing this because she loves you, you know.”

“I know.”

“No, David,” Alexis shakes her head and looks at the ground, a melancholy smile tucked into the corner of her cheek. “She _loves_ you. She’s always going to love you, I think, and so. She can’t help it. For better or worse, she believes in you.”

“But,” David takes a deep inhale, the tobacco blooming earthy and harsh in his lungs, “aren’t the two of you…” he lets his voice trail off because, to be honest, he’s not quite sure what they are other than _together._

“Oh, I’m not worried about that, you silly goose,” she says, batting him on the shoulder, the cigarette in her hands trailing a thin line of smoke. She winks at him, which he understands in a way he wishes he didn’t, given that this is his best friend and his sister they’re talking about. “‘Much like you were always meant to be an odd duck, Stephanie Budd was always meant to be a part of the Rose family.’” 

David sucks in a little breath — she’s quoting his favorite books at him, albeit badly, as she’d never much cared for _Little Women_ , but after a lifetime spent mistrusting fate being validated for the decision, the thought that his best friend was always meant to be his family was one pluck too many on his heartstrings. 

“Anyway,” his sister keeps going, “it’s not a bad thing to have people believe in you, you know. I know we’re not exactly experts on the subject — how could we be, given the inimitable duo of Moira and Johnny Rose — but I think it’s one of those facts of life that we’re bound to learn eventually.” She looks down at the cigarette case she’s still holding, shifting in back and forth in the sunshine to watch the colors shift in the inlay. “This is really stunning, David. It doesn’t seem like your style, though.”

“It’s because it’s not,” David says, finishing his cigarette and reaching out for the case. He doesn’t like not having it on his person for too long, if he can help it. It’s earned a coveted place on his nightstand, although he hasn’t resorted to slipping it under the pillow next to him — yet. “He gave it to me. He found it in a junk shop in Bougival.” 

Alexis nods. “Ah.”

“What ‘ah’?”

“Nothing! I just — if that’s where he found it, the coordinates must be left over from whatever GI had it before yours picked it up.”

David knew they were still speaking English, but it felt like his sister was being filtered through mud. “Coordinates — Alexis, what do you mean coordinates? What are you talking about?”

Alexis flips it over as she hands it to him, her thumb tracing along the numbers on the back, the ones David has been taking for an artist mark, because he was a fool. “I once dated this Sultan’s nephew who was forbidden to talk to me or even look at me, but we made it work for like, half a regime change because his man would pass me lat-longs and I’d meet him in forbidden grottos, a camel barn, that kind of thing. Very romantic.” She points at the numbers. “These are coordinates, David. Latitude and longitude.” He stares at his sister, his mouth agape, and she blinks at him, her eyes doe-like and patient. “Like on a map? The latitude runs East to We—” 

“I know what latitude and longitude are,” he snaps at her, grabbing the case back and tracing the fine silver grooves, deep enough in the metal to last, and something inside him breaks open. 

Alexis makes a little gasping sound and presses her fingers to her lips. “Oh my God, David! What if they’re _his,”_ she whispers? David’s face collapses, his head already shaking.

Why? Why would Patrick have done this? Why was _this_ how he was showing David the path forward? 

_He had to leave you,_ something whispers, something that doesn’t hurt like every single time he’s thought it before. He’d known Patrick had to leave — he was a captain in the fucking army, fighting a war. He couldn’t desert and still be the man David had fallen in love with. _Patrick had left,_ but this — this was surely a sign. A sign that Patrick wanted him. Needed him. As much as David wanted and needed in return. It’s _hope_ burning in his lungs, a terrible agony of hope that opens like a yawning void beneath his feet.

He stares down at the case. 

“It isn’t possible,” he says, his eyes wet and hot. “Alexis, it can’t, we, he — he wouldn’t have had time.”

She’s studying him in a way his baby sister has never looked at him before. He’s spent so many years caring for her, pulling her out of scrapes, saving her from all the bad men of the world only to have her fall into their clutches all over again. She was impudent and impulsive, naive and far too trusting, and in this moment she’s a grown up, looking at him with care and affection and more gentleness than he has ever fucking deserved. “We lose nothing by looking. Right? If the coordinates lead to somewhere in Canada, then you owe it to yourself to find out, David, or you’re going to spend the rest of your life regretting that you didn’t.”

She’s right. He knows she’s right, and he presses the case to his wildly beating heart. “What if it’s not him?”

“What if it is?” she asks, and his heart crumples up like tin in his chest. 

That’s where Stevie finds them, twenty minutes later. And when he tells her, in trembling and broken words, what Alexis has helped him discover, she whacks him on the arm and says, “You idiot. There’s a library down the street.”

*

David _is_ an idiot. There’s a library down the street. 

A very kind librarian guides them to the ready reference room, where countless hundreds of encyclopedias, dictionaries, and reference materials live. She helps them pull down massive, table-sized atlases for them to look at, and leaves them alone. 

He almost doesn’t want to look, keeps his eyes shut as Alexis mutters under her breath and opens the huge atlas flat on the table.

She turns one page. Then another. Then pages forward to another section and he chokes out, “Alexis.”

“Shh!” she hisses, but he can — there’s a smile in her voice. “Okay. Okay, David. It’s here. It’s Ontario.”

The world twists one foot to the left, and he sinks into a chair before he loses his legs completely. Relief rushes his bones to dust, and he presses his linked fingers to his mouth. “Ontario.”

“These maps aren’t great, but it looks like at the time this book was published, the coordinates led to farmland. There’s a huge forest in the area, a river… Salmon River. It’s part of Lake Ontario.”

 _I used to go swimming when I was a little boy,_ Patrick had murmured to him, the night they first made love. _There was a river that used to cut through our land. Good fishing._

He closes his eyes against the painful, pitiful surge of _hope._ “What.” He stops. Clears his throat. “What else?”

Alexis hums, thoughtful, and flips back and forth between two pages. “There’s a nature preserve of some kind. Maybe a park? Oh! And the cutest little name for a waterfall, Buttermilk Falls.” 

_There’s this family that lives near us. They’ve been on the land for almost two hundred years. They thought I was sweet on their daughter for the longest, but I just thought the butter churning was relaxing to watch,_ Patrick had said, and David closes his eyes against the relief. “It’s him.”

Stevie squeezes his shoulder, tightly, and sits down next to him at the small reference table. “Are you sure?”

He nods, gently setting the cigarette case down on the table. It’s smudged with fingerprints, the wet of his tears. “Yes.”

Alexis breathes out across from them, slow and quiet. “Okay. So. Okay. What are you going to do?”

Oh, God. He stares at the woman captured forever in gilt gold, cornflowers in her hair. “I don’t know.”

“You _don’t know?_ ” Stevie asks. “Are you kidding me?”

“He — he may still be overseas. He may be _dead._ ”

“You’re not going to find that out here.” 

Stevie’s right, of course she’s right, but terror locks up his jaw, tightens his throat. “Maybe he didn’t mean to. Maybe this case was meant for someone else.”

“You’re an idiot,” Alexis snaps, and snatches up the cigarette case. “Get up.”

“What?”

“Ugh, David. Up. Up!” she swats at him until he hops to his feet.

He stares at her and she glares at him, poking him hard in the shoulder. “You’ve taken care of me, and this family, for a very long time. You’ve been smoothing things over, and trying to do things to make our lives easier. And we — we all took advantage. And, maybe, I was wrong for asking you to come to Paris, though I didn’t know you couldn’t fly, and then Stevie, she _explained_ to me about the boat and something could have happened, and. And it would have been my fault. Urh! This isn’t coming out the way I want it to.” 

She glares at him, as if _he_ is responsible for her word vomit, but she just shakes her head, takes him by the shoulders, and tries again. “You are not a coward. I think — I think your little button-face is the best thing that ever happened to you. I’ve never seen you so happy, and the last two months, so devastated for want of him. So you’re going to,” and at this she cranes her neck over her shoulder to peer at the book, “Forest Mills Ontario and you’re going to find him, David.”

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

He nods, biting his cheek, and Alexis beams at him and draws him into a hug he’s never felt the like. He squeezes her back, burying his face in her hair, and Stevie joins in, wrapping skinny arms around them both. 

*

In his experience, hope has never quite felt like this.

It vacillates between flavors, but never quite goes away. Over the next two days of preparation for his trip, he goes from stark raving terror to overwhelming longing, and back again. His stomach is in perpetual knots, and he can’t sleep for thinking about what he’s going to find when he gets to Forest Mills. If he finds anything at all. When he _does_ dare to hope, he can’t get past Patrick’s face, cracked open in a smile, his love for David as palpable as it had been that first night David had slipped his hand in Patrick’s pocket on their way across the bridge.

He has no idea what to expect, so he tries not to expect anything, but when has that ever been a successful method for dealing with the racing thoughts in his brain? 

So instead he packs and unpacks his bag a dozen times, waffles between sweaters to pack, quadruple checks the mimeographed copies of the maps he’s taking that will guide him between here and Forest Mills. 

According to the map, there isn’t a central road for him to take to Forest Mills. The road doesn’t look _that_ long, but it’s a series of winding country switchbacks and seemingly nonsensical byways. the trip shouldn’t take more than two days, and that’s at a leisurely pace, which David plans for but isn’t entirely sure he’ll be able to keep to. The cruel irony of feeling utterly, completely separate from Patrick, while ultimately not being more than a few days away down a series of winding country roads, is something that David isn’t sure he’ll ever be able to look clearly in the face. Instead, he forces himself to remember the bright side of the same coin: that Patrick is here, so close he can actually _get_ to him in a world and life where getting anywhere is getting increasingly more possible. 

And when, at last, he’s run through all of those thoughts, stopped at every possible notch on the wheel of fate, he lays on his bed and closes his eyes and pretends to sleep while his brain runs him through a million potential outcomes to this foolish endeavor.

On the worst end of the spectrum, David imagines driving into Forest Mills and finding nothing but a tombstone, grey and already mossing over, the span between the dates painfully short, the list of accolades behind Patrick’s name short enough to make David ache, even in the dream world. It’s been six months since he woke up in his bed at the Gaston, to find himself alone. The war treaties have been signed, Allied forces were being moved, and a great many of them were being sent home. But Patrick had said he’d been asked to re-up, and there had been talk on the radio of German war crimes far exceeding what had been believed. What if Patrick had felt he needed to stay? What if he’d recommissioned? 

But there are other outcomes he imagines that, while they don’t wake him feeling nauseous, still fill his bones with dread: Patrick’s face, falling, at seeing David on his doorstep; a carefully worded explanation that David had it all wrong, that Patrick hadn’t meant to be found; that he doesn’t want David, that David isn’t welcome in Forest Mills. 

But when he forces himself to, when he quiets the voices of nerves screaming in his head, he can imagine a different set of outcomes. Patrick’s smile, blooming bright and full and overwhelming. Patrick’s arms, looping around David’s neck and pulling their bodies together like magnets. Patrick, teasing David for taking this long, but so overwhelmingly glad he’d finally figured it out. Patrick, saying “I love you” again.

It’s this last one that propels him out of bed that third morning, awake before anyone else, his body jittery with anticipation even as his eyes are scratchy and there’s a painful tightness underneath his ribs. Fear and hope mix like a bad cocktail, and he finds the confines of the four walls of the inn room are pressing down on him, smothering him, _suffocating him._ Outside is no better, standing in his bare feet on the front stoop, sucking in the last cool minutes of night before the sun came up and reminded him it was summer. He sits, right there, in his open doorway, and stares at the line of trees across the way, the old inn sign rusting where it stands near the road that crosses in front of the inn. 

David has never done anything like this for himself. He’s flown all over the world saving Alexis like he was her personal safety net. He’d traveled to see his mother when she was having a breakdown over a director’s guidance that she felt was not appropriate to the character she was portraying. He’d overseen renovation of the Los Angeles property for his father the summer he turned twenty-seven, putting his life and six gallery openings on hold only for his father to sell the property that fall. He’d flown to Paris at the beginning of the war to help Stevie get to Ireland safely. 

He loves his family, but he’s spent so long putting their needs before his own that this, what he’s doing, feels unbearably selfish. 

He stares at the tree line, as the sky begins to lighten from the east. Birds begin to sing, and across the way, in the gloom, he can see a baby deer and it’s mother come out of the forest to graze on the bushes near the road. In time, he hears the door to Alexis and Stevie’s room open, and he doesn’t have to look up to know it’s Stevie. He’d recognize her footfalls, her breathing, anywhere. She sits next to him, and he leans his shoulder gently against hers. 

“Hi.”

“Hi,” she murmurs back. “You’re awake early.”

“I’d say the same thing about you.”

“Your sister kicks.”

He twists his face into a mew of distaste, just to make her smile. “Didn’t need that look into your lives, thanks so much. Whatever depraved things you do behind closed doors is your business.”

“Yeah, it’s sexy to get shoved out of bed every night,” Stevie says, and reaches across his back to tug on the hair at the nape of his neck. “Are you ready to do this?”

“No.”

She nods, picking at a loose thread on her sleep pants. They’re satin, and belong to his sister. He’d recognize that rose print anywhere. She’d worn them the night he got her out of Laos. “Do you want me to come with you?”

“Yes, desperately,” he says, as the deer and her baby cross the road towards the inn, towards the swath of forest that hugs the property to the east. They watch them for a bit, the mother deer’s footfalls gentle and slow, the baby stopping to sniff at everything in its path before remembering to follow and scampering to catch up. “But this. This is something I need to do on my own, I think.”

“I’m so proud of you,” Stevie says, and he can hear how choked with emotion she is, and he squeezes her hand tightly, there over the crease of her knee where she’s playing with that loose thread. 

“You… you don’t mind? About the store?”

“Of course I don’t mind,” Stevie says. They’d gotten the keys for the place yesterday, and David hadn’t stepped foot in it yet. He’d done it on purpose. 

His store. His dream would be realized, because Patrick had made him better, and made David believe that he could have what he wanted in this world if he just reached out for it. His store would keep him from falling into the well of despair again. It was something to look forward to, something to make beautiful.

No matter what happened in Forest Mills, David had his store. A reason to keep stepping one foot in front of the other. 

Stevie and Alexis were going to open it up, see what needed to be done, what needed to be cleaned and what needed to be thrown out. The building was two stories high, and apparently the previous tenants had left everything in it, from bric-a-brac to mannequins to storage containers. “The realtor said there were _moths._ ”

“Yep.” Stevie grins up at him. “Big, brown, flappy ones. I promise we’ll get rid of them, David. When you get back, the store will be moth-free. When you get back, you can pick through everything and toss out anything you don’t want.”

His heart is in his throat. He’s never loved anyone half as much as he loves Stevie Budd. “Do you know, I think you’re my best friend.”

Stevie’s eyes crinkle up with mirth. The first time they’d had this conversation had been the summer they spent on his yacht, the night of the bad curry. The night they realized that they were much better off as friends. She replies now like she did then, scowling at him, even with the smile playing around her mouth. “You _think?_ ”

“I can’t know for sure, because I’m realizing I’ve never really had one,” he says, gruff, and Stevie tugs him closer so they’re temple to temple. 

There in the quiet pocket she’s made for them, where he feels safe, she says, “It’s going to be okay. You’re going to get through this, and no matter what happens, I’m here for you. Alexis and I are going to get the store ready, and your dad has promised to _try_ and help with the inn and even your mother came out of the closet when I told her you were leaving.”

“You told her?” Stevie nods. “And she _got out of the closet._ ” Stevie nods again and David lets out a heavy breath. It’s not exactly going to win his parents any awards any time soon, but. They were trying.

“We’re all here, David. We aren’t going to let you fall.”

They haven’t. They’ve kept him afloat these last months, taken care of him, fed him and showed him the path back to himself. 

David presses a kiss to her tiny knuckles, to hide the shaking of his chin. 

He’s on the road before the sun finishes rising. In the rearview mirror, he sees Stevie in her rose-patterned pajamas, and the two deer as they disappear into the line of the forest.

*

With the life he’s led, David hasn’t had much opportunity to drive. He knows how, and has a driving license, but had spent most of his life _being driven_ rather than _driving._

He’s never been given the keys to a truck, a map, and a slap on the back. 

He finds, very quickly, that he likes it. He likes the quiet, the solitary driving, the radio and the sound of the road under balding tires. He likes the little gas stations that dot the Canadian countryside, and he likes the smell of the water, rivers and lakes and estuaries that feed from Lake Ontario and thread out into the wilderness for miles upon miles. Thick, dense elm trees and birch trees and sycamores and of course, the maples, lush and green now, but which would turn fiery red and orange and yellow in just a few months, once the air got crisp again and winter was on them once more. 

It’s beautiful countryside, and the further he drives, the more peaceful he becomes. The noise is still there, waiting to overwhelm him, but with nothing but the sound of the road, the engine under his hands and the road taking him through the wilderness, something quiets in him. He’s grateful for it, for this single moment of peace.

The dream of what could be comes into sharp clarity, the sun behind him and fluffy white clouds floating by on this perfect summer day. He knows that this is a fool’s errand. He knows that Patrick is likely dead. But for the first time since grief turned him inside out, since he felt as if his still-beating heart had been torn from him, he sees the path forward. No matter what comes of this trip, David will come out the other side and be healed. 

He hopes he’ll get to meet Patrick’s mother. _She’s the strongest person I know,_ he’d told David, and David knows that’s true. Who else but a strong woman could have raised a man like Patrick? A man of honor, a man who would lay down his life for others?

He knows by the end of the first day that his two-day trip won’t be done in two days. The closer he gets to Patrick, the more he feels like he’s returning to himself, slowly slipping back into the nooks and crannies of a body he’s been neglecting for months. He takes deep breaths, feels the muscles in his back begin to unfurl, and he doesn’t want to rush through the feeling. It’s odd, because as much as he wants to see Patrick with every cell of want he’s ever had in his body, he’s also enjoying this time to himself, to think and process, or to drown out all his thinking with the static and occasional country station on the radio. 

After spending the first night sleeping in his car, and almost immediately deciding that’s an experience he never wants to repeat, he’s lucky enough to find a roadside inn not all that different than the Rosebudd one day hopes to be, and he stops for the night. He reaches Forest Mills at nearly five in the evening on the third day. The little hamlet is unincorporated, much like the businesses around Stevie’s inn, but this one actually has a name, though likely only because it’s a stop point for the Canadian National train system. He pulls to a stop in front of the railway station, little more than a shoebox, but when he enters there’s a post office, and a bored man standing behind the window. 

He perks up when he sees David, and shouts, “Howdy, stranger!” 

David doesn’t think he’ll ever quite understand rural people and their ability to be so _cordial_ with absolute strangers. It grates on him, makes him think of New York and how talking to a stranger could cost you your life. 

Fuck, he misses the city.

“I need directions. Please.”

“New to Forest Mills! Well I’ll be,” the man exclaims, and his smile is just a touch shit-eating, bordering on a smirk. “What’s a city boy like you doing out this far?”

 _Uncouth sycophant,_ his mother hisses in his ear. “I beg your pardon?”

“Alright there, no need to get your knickers in a twist,” the man says, his white-blond fly-away hair in an unkempt halo around his head. David stares at him, aghast. “Who’re you looking for, city slicker?”

“You are quite possibly the rudest person I’ve ever met in my life,” David blurts, and the man throws his head back on a laugh. 

“Just been alone in this station for most of the day. Sorry to get you all ruffled, son. Name’s Roland.”

Roland was clearly raised in a barn, or perhaps in a cave by wolves. “I’m looking for the Brewer family.”

“Which one?”

David blinks. “What?”

“Which one there, sonny boy? There are about fifty Brewers in the area.”

Fuck. “I’m — I’m looking for Patrick Brewer.”

Roland’s beady little eyes narrow. “Patrick the elder? Or the younger? Or the younger’s younger?”

Jesus _fucking_ Christ. “How would I know that, Roland?”

Roland studies him, smacking his lips. “Well, is it the Patrick who’s eighty-nine, the Patrick who owns the mead mill, or the Patrick who joined the Army?”

He has the right town. This is Patrick’s town. This is where Patrick lives. 

“The last. The last one,” he croaks, swallowing. “The Patrick who joined the Army.”

“Clint and Marci’s boy.”

“Yes,” David breathes, relief coursing through him. “Where can I find him?”

Roland rocks back on his heels and sucks his teeth. “Now, that seems like an awful tasty morsel of information you need there.”

David stares at him. Roland stares back.

“Are you asking what I think you’re asking?”

“I have no idea what you mean,” Roland says lazily, mouth curved into a perfect smirk.

“I don’t have any money,” David says, and his heart begins to race. This man knows where he needs to go, and David doesn’t have a dime to his name. He doesn’t have anything he can barter for it, for what he needs. “Please, can you just direct me where to go.”

“Now, where’s the manners in that, don’t they teach ya to say please in the city these days?”

His emotions are too close to the surface, and rage and pain and anger fight for dominance under the endless sea of depression that has suffused his world for months now. He thinks — no. He _knows_ he could be moved to violence if he stays here for even one more moment.

He spins on his heel, and hears the man call after him, but it isn’t until he’s gone back outside, gravel under his loafers, that he realizes Roland is _following him._ “Hey, no, I realize now that I took that a bit too far, sonny boy. You’re a little wild around the eyes, though, aincha? Just cool your heels and I’ll tell ya where to go, to get to old Clint’s farm.”

David stares at him from over the hood of the truck. “Get out of my way.”

“No, no, I don’t want this getting back to me. It was harmless fun.” Roland pats at his pockets for a minute before coming out with a little moleskine notebook, old and beaten half to death. The nubbin of a pencil barely scratches along the surface of the paper, but Roland tears the sheet out of the book, slaps it on the hood. “There ya go. Address. Salmon River Road, take a right then a left, then two more rights. It’ll be the big white house on the right. If you pass the red barn you’ve gone too far.”

There must be something in his eyes, because Roland takes a step back. “I don’t think I ever caught your name.”

“No, you didn’t,” David says, and gets back in the truck, turning the ignition. Roland waves like an ass, laughing, and David mutters, “Prick,” as he pulls out of the parking lot.

Prick though he may be, but Roland’s directions are precise. A right, then a left, then two more rights and David is on a road that follows a snaking river, wide and deep in places. It smells like fresh water and green _things,_ like growth and new opportunities and summertime. And for the first time in months, since the Gaston, since the night David cupped Patrick’s beautiful face and kissed him the first time, he feels Patrick right here with him. He can see him fishing on the river, and swimming in the creek that it spills out into. He can see him walking, barefoot, on the side of the road, sucking on penny candy with his cousins giggling all around him. He can see this place in the winter, snow drifts three feet high, his mother walking him to school. Everything about this beautiful place lives and breathes _Patrick,_ and he isn’t surprised to pass _Brewer Road_ , isn’t surprised to see signs for _Brewer Mill_. This place _is_ his family, and his family is this place. 

It feels like something out of a dream, and David has started to cry. It seems so easy for the tears to come on him these days, but these come from the raw wound at the center of him, half-healed that tore open at the slightest provocation. This feels like something deep, and honest, and tastes like grief. 

And then he sees the house. The red barn on the hill. A man is leading cows into the barn for the night, the dip of his hat obscuring his face. The sun has begun its path through the sky, and it’ll be dipping down over the horizon soon enough. And there’s perfect, and then there’s whatever exists in the degrees beyond that, because David looks at the sloping green lawn that leads up to the whitewashed clapboard and low, spindled wrap-around porch, thinks he sees rocking chairs, and. If he’d had to bet his life and last dollar on a drawing of the house Patrick Brewer grew up in, it would be this one. 

He pulls off the main road and onto a dirt path, tire tracks worn into the grass. It’s a long, winding path that begins in a corn field, stalks so tall they obscure the view of the house from his window, and then he’s through it all and free to watch it grow larger and larger in front of him, until he’s parking in a patch of dirt just off the side of the house. He feels like he’s not entirely in his body, like he’s still watching all of this happen from outside himself, and his body is warring between the effervescent hope filling his chest and the logical edge of dread scratching right behind it. 

He pops open the door of the car and lets out a quiet groan, his legs and back aching from the day in the car. He leans against the side of the car, his eyes taking in the tire swing hanging from the large oak tree across the yard, the rough-hewn picnic table not too far from it, the wood nicked and stained from years of use. The small details that build a life, the kind of life that David thought only existed in Norman Rockwell paintings. He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath and tries for one last time to imagine himself in a life like this, to remind himself that he could do it, for Patrick, with Patrick. Patrick, who’s closer than he’s been in months, and far enough away that David can’t bring himself to step away from the solidity of the car behind him. 

“Hello?”

Until, of course, he’s not alone anymore and the choice isn’t really his. “Hello,” he calls, because what else is he supposed to say? He can’t see who’s speaking, the sun sinking low enough behind them to cast them in shadow, but they’re standing on the far side of the porch, facing David, and he knows immediately that it isn’t Patrick’s voice. 

“Can I help you?”

“Yes, hi, I’m looking for Patrick? Patrick Brewer?”

“Hard to find a Patrick with a different last name in this town, I’m afraid. Who are you? I didn’t think Patrick was expecting company.” There’s an almost friendly suspicion in her voice, an edge that lets David know that Patrick is being protected, and the thought sends a ribbon of warmth down the back of his body, pricks at the corners of his eyes and rattles the breath in his chest. 

“I, um. I don’t know that he’s expecting me? Or, maybe he is, but certainly isn’t today? I’m — I’m David. David Rose?”

And he has no idea who this woman is, or how she knows Patrick, or how much she might or might not know about who he is, but she clearly knows something, based on the way her shoulders roll back and David hears something almost like a hiss on the air. He takes a step towards her, finally peeling his body away from the cold metal of the car, and puts his hand to his eyes to try and shade his view, get a better look at her face.

She’s pretty. _Incredibly_ pretty. The kind of pretty that was kind, and inviting. David had seen some of the most beautiful people in the world up-close and still felt like they were in their own separate world, but this woman. She’s the kind of beautiful that makes you feel grounded, that makes her feel approachable, and David warms to her immediately. 

“Patrick’s bringing the cows in from the field, he should be done soon. Would you like to wait?”

David’s throat tightens at the thought of even this much more a wait, but he nods. “I would love to.”

“Lemonade? I was just bringing some out to the porch.”

“Lovely,” he says, and walks the last few steps across the lawn to the porch steps, following her as she makes her way back around to the front of the house. From here, David can see the stretch of lawn that turns into the deep brown of tilled earth, the stretch of sky that seems to dome over the house as blues and purples begin to stretch long above them. It’s a breathtaking view, and David remembers what Patrick had said about loving the _space,_ missing the _space_ of his home, and at the time David hadn’t understood.

He thinks now maybe he might. 

The woman turns to hand him a glass, and even with her small frame, her belly curves enough that he can tell she’s pregnant. He takes the glass quickly and motions towards the two rockers he’d been able to see on his way up the drive. 

“I’m so sorry!” he says, although he’s not entirely sure what he’s apologizing for. “I didn’t realize you were—” his eyes dart towards her belly, and then immediately away.

“A redhead? It’s okay, it can be hard to tell in the dim light,” she says, and winks and David, and oh. He _does_ like her. “It’s okay David. Really. No need to apologize for something you had no hand in.” 

“Thank you…” He trails off as he realizes he never actually got her name. 

“Rachel,” she says, reaching out her glass to toast against David’s. He toasts her back and she takes a sip with a contented little hum, while David lets his glass rest on the top of his knee as he tries to keep the world from spinning, black already pressing in at the edges of his vision. 

He feels like he’s been shoved, like he’s been tripped and the laws of gravity no longer hold the same power they once did. _This_ is Rachel. Patrick’s Rachel. The Rachel he was going to marry, before the war, before David, before life had begun to look so radically different than any of them could have ever predicted. And David knows. David knows in the space between his cells, that Patrick hadn’t done it. Patrick hadn’t waited. His eyes flick down to Rachel’s belly again, her hand resting on top of it, curling around it instinctively, protecting it. A small band of gold glints in the final rays of evening light, the diamond chip catching David’s eye like it’s the Hope Diamond. 

David didn’t blame Patrick. David _couldn’t_ blame him. David loved him. David could only begin to guess at the kind of horror Patrick had seen after he’d left the Gaston that morning, what kind of lives had intersected with his own, what twists and turns had — thankfully — brought him home, alive, to Canada. When David had been broken, he’d retreated inside himself, and only his family had been able to ease him into something like a life again. It seemed that Patrick’s family had done the same for him, and now that family would only get the chance to grow.

Just not with David in it. 

The lemonade in his glass burns his throat like acid, and he tries to smile, to feel the grit of sugar on his taste buds and force the ringing in his ears to quiet. “This is a beautiful home you have,” David says, his voice quiet and catching around the ball of emotion in the back of his throat. 

Rachel smiles and takes another drink of lemonade. “Thank you! It belongs to Patrick’s parents, actually — they’ve moved into town, to help with Patrick’s grandfather, and to give Patrick the chance to get his feet back underneath him.”

“I imagine this will be quite the perfect house to start your family in,” David says sincerely. This is a house that was made for familial joys, made to be mortared by laughter and insulated with the whispered dreams of generations. 

Rachel smiles and nods. “You know, Patrick always says the same thing! That it’s why we have to stay, because this house won’t be the same if there isn’t a family inside it.” 

_We._ Two small letters that twist up and into David’s diaphragm like a pitchfork, drive the air out his lungs with a ferocity that shocks him. He coughs around it, takes another drink of lemonade and drains the glass. He sets it on a small side table with a gentle click, and stands to go.

He can’t do this. He won’t do this. Not to Patrick. 

Turns out Patirck being dead _isn’t_ the worst possible outcome David can imagine anymore. It’s him, here, building this other life. And it burns, not with jealousy, but with _admiration._ For the type of father and husband Patrick will be, the kind and generous mother he can already see blooming in Rachel, the promise of a new life born into a world no longer controlled by hatred and violence. David is dying because he can’t have Patrick, but he also doesn’t _want_ a Patrick who would leave his wife and child for David. 

And, intentionally or not, he’d made Patrick choose before. He couldn’t do that to him again. 

“You know, I think I’ve actually got to go. See, I meant to bring a few things by for Patrick, but I. Um. I’ve forgotten them back in town and I’m. I need to go. Get them. The things, for Patrick.” He’s blabbering, and he’s pretty sure there are tears streaming down his cheeks, but the sun has officially set and luckily for him the light of the fireflies isn’t quite enough to tell by. He swallows down a sob and turns to go. 

“No, wait, surely you don’t need to—”

“Thank you so much for the lemonade, you’ve been so kind—” 

“David?”

He’s halfway down the porch steps and his body stops moving so suddenly he almost trips over the momentum and his own two feet. He’s staring at the strip of dirt at the bottom of the steps, where it slowly transitions into the sprouting of grass, and he squeezes his eyes shut. He can’t look. He can’t have come all this way, can’t put his eyes on Patrick, only to tell him goodbye again. This whole fucking thing was a fool’s errand. 

But he hears Patrick say his name again from the porch, small and fragile and cracked, like he can’t quite believe it’s him. David exhales slowly and turns, keeping his eyes on his feet as he walks back to the top of the steps. When he finally looks up, all the oxygen in the world presses away from his body and he can’t find a way to take a breath.

Patrick looks awful. He looks tired, and worn; his skin is sallow, despite the tan from the long days in the sun, and skin under his eyes looks bruised. Worst of all, though, is the vacancy in his gaze, the darkness where there once was radiant joy, and it punches through all four chambers of David’s heart. 

He’s still the most beautiful man David has ever seen.

“Hello, Patrick,” he says, his voice quiet. He clears his throat and tries again. “I was just. Talking to Rachel a little. It’s good to see you. Congratulations on — starting a family. That’s wonderful, Patrick. Really. I couldn’t be happier for you! The happiest! You’re going to be su—” 

David never gets to finish telling them what he thinks Patrick is going to be, the sentence swallowed by Patrick’s mouth on his, his arms wrapping around David’s waist so tightly that David’s feet leave the porch for half a second and then his hips are crashing into the wooden porch railing of Patrick’s childhood home, the place that looks like the Brewer family encapsulated in studs and beams. 

And there are questions — so many questions, so many fears and worries and major and minor conversations for them to have, but right now all David can think is that Patrick’s lips are on his, Patrick’s hands are in his hair, his chest heaving against David’s, the beating of David’s heart in time with the steady, precious way Patrick’s thumbs brush over David’s cheeks. 

Whatever else is to come, David knows, here and now, in the space between breaths, when he feels like he’s breathing Patrick into the depths of his lungs and the bottom of his heart, that he is home. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is our 9th chance to thank our absolutely AMAZING team of betas, [TINN](https://archiveofourown.org/users/this_is_not_nothing/profile), [helvetica](https://archiveofourown.org/users/helvetica_upstart/pseuds/helvetica_upstart), and our sensitivity reader [whetherwoman](https://archiveofourown.org/users/whetherwoman/pseuds/whetherwoman), for the absolutely jaw-dropping task they've risen to the occasion of. They've gotten novella length chapters with less than 36 hours turn around time, and they came through like angels. This fic wouldn't exist as it does without them.


	10. Chapter Ten

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There will be far more effusive notes on the epilogue, but for now, with the sincerest and deepest gratitude we possess, let us just say: thank you all so, so much for reading.

After spending the earliest decades of his life making silent promises to himself that he’ll never touch another livestock animal for as long as he lives, there’s something Patrick finds deeply calming about going out at the beginning and ending of every day to bring the cows to pasture. The early morning grass is still strewn with a thousand diamonds before he and the cows make their way through it, and at the end of the evening, there’s a loamy, dank smell of churned soil and bitten grass that distracts him on his way back home.

In the months since he’s been home, he’s learned to approximate something like sleep, enough consecutive hours that he manages to get up every day and take care of the tasks in front of him. It’s not easy work, and it doesn’t take long for his body to remember the particular ache of long days spent working under the sun; for as many miles as he’s trekked across pockmarked battlefields and through the burnt-out shells of villages, his body didn’t hurt then the way it does know, deep into the calluses on his hands and the tendons in his forearms and the solid, constant burn in his thighs. They’re pains that ground him in his body, distracting him from the aches in his mind that are a steady, unceasing hum throughout every waking hour. 

His first night at home, he sits at the round, worn wooden table in his parents’ kitchen, and lets the sound of his mother’s voice, of Rachel’s voice, wash over him. He feels lulled by it, and because of that, it takes his brain even longer to latch on to the words they’re actually saying. Things like _apartment in the city_ and _your grandfather fell_ and _my husband, Andrew_ that, once they worm their way past the fog he’s become accustomed to living in, change the subtle landscape and coloration of his life.

He wants to stay. He’s just gotten the chance to get back to the land he’s been thinking about for the last ten years, back to the home he’s spent his most terrified moments, his most tense moments, his most passionate and life-soaked moments clinging to. A place where he’d seen the sky painted purple, had kissed Rachel for the first time, had never once had to fear for his life.

He doesn’t want to go to the city. So he’ll stay. He’ll stay, and take over the duties at the farm, and his mother can stay in the city and everything will be fine. 

And if he goes to bed without seeing the concerned looks his mother and Rachel exchange, really, who can blame him. It’s been a long day. 

That first night, Patrick has one of the worst nightmares he’s had in a long time. The nurses had warned him that might happen, a combination of the sudden change of scenery and the subverted routines that make his days feel safe, and predictable, and worn. But he hadn’t listened — what’s a worse nightmare, when you’re so used to not being able to tell the difference even when you’re awake?

He should have listened. His eyes open in the dream and he’s surrounded by nothing but deep, empty blackness. He thinks he can hear an ocean, and further beyond that the steady, pinging beat of repetitive gunfire. He tries to walk towards the sound, but every step he takes brings him somehow further from the sound and more into a silence that feels like a pressure against his eardrums. He opens his mouth to call for help and feels a tendril of...something snake inside his open mouth. It begins to choke him, to fill his throat and his lungs and the corners of his chest cavity around his ribs and heart.

He reaches up to pull whatever it is from his mouth, but there’s nothing there, nothing he can feel but the long, snaking, gently undulating _thing_ in his mouth. He can’t breathe around it as it snakes upward to fill his nose, and the corners of his eyes where tears pour freely, and he tries to keep still, prays to whatever entity controls terror and dread that being still will be the thing to free him, but the calmer he goes the faster the thing moves, until it’s filling every cell of his body, ripping him apart from the inside, and he can’t hold still anymore, he has to be rid of it, has to pull the thing out of his body even if it kills him, even _as_ it’s killing him, his body thrashing and shaking and striking out at whatever flat surface he can reach. 

He comes to consciousness with his mother lying across his chest and Rachel holding one of his ankles to the mattress as firmly as she can without getting kicked in the stomach. As soon as they see that his eyes are open, they let go of him and he curls into a ball, shaking, his eyes wide open and his breath coming in staggered, rasping gasps. When his mother tries to rub his back, he starts like she’s made of electricity. He presses his eyes shut and lets out a soft keening sound, letting it fill the room until it’s a steady, almost meditative drone. 

Eventually, he runs out of the energy to do even that, and he spends the rest of the hours until dawn staring into the middle distance and wondering how he got here, from a man on the cusp of life at _Le Lido_ to a frightened boy one step above pissing himself in his childhood bed.

The second night he’s home proceeds much like the first, only the nightmare is slightly different — instead of something he can’t see pressing into his lungs, it’s something he can’t see pulling the air out of his body, an slow increasing pressure against his mouth and nose and chest and even the follicles of his hair as the oxygen is drawn from his body and not given back. 

He wakes from this one with his own hand pressed to his chest, sweat pouring down his face as his mother stands and watches him — Rachel isn’t there anymore, gone back to her own house now that Patrick’s first night is past, although she’ll be back the next day, some schedule she’s established with his mother that they may have told him about but that he can’t honestly remember. 

She’s supposed to bring Andrew, who’s name sometimes still slips through the cracks in Patrick’s brain, but who comes to be an anchor point in this new life, After. He’s the kind of man Patrick can be friends with, and the way he sets a hand on Rachel’s shoulder as they all gather around the dinner table makes Patrick feel...something he can’t quite put a name to. Andrew’s His cheeks are ruddy and his eyes are bright and he’s tall enough that even David would have had to take several steps back to look him in the eye. 

_David._

It’s the first time he's been able to think David’s name without the violent and red-hot constriction of his throat that’s come to accompany it. 

His nights are terrorizing, but his days do their very best to shine away the darkness in the corners of his heart, quickly filling with all the big and small work it takes to maintain farmland, to keep the living things in his stead alive. He pulls weeds out by the roots and creeps as quietly as he can through the wooden hen coops, removing eggs gently so as not to break them or rouse the guinea hens from their slumber. Some days are more successful than others, and he loses a handful of perfectly good undershirts at the beginning to yolk and feathers and the bloody scratch of talons. 

But, at the end of the day, he’s able to quite literally count the chickens he’s hatched, or the sheep he’s shorn, or the poundage of corn he’s been able to cut down and haul in. And he can point to those things and say, “this, this is the point.” The point of putting his feet down on the floorboards every morning, the point of continuing to wake up to a world that’s more peaceful today than it was yesterday, but is still full of one discrete, unfillable gap shaped like a man named David. 

He’s home for two weeks before he finds the old guitar, shoved into a sideboard cabinet next to dusty candlesticks and a small, framed portrait of someone Patrick doesn't know, but has to be a Brewer, if the nose and set of the eyes were any indication. Patrick has no idea where the guitar came from — he’d sold his when he enlisted, and it’s not the deep brown, nicked wood guitar his grandfather always used. He imagines one of the many Brewer cousins, or nephews, buying it at the Five and Dime, stashing it here away from the disapproving eyes of a parent and either forgotten entirely or, based on the fact that the guitar isn’t in _complete_ disarray, more likely visited on the rare chance that spare minutes could be stolen.

Patrick takes it out, and tunes it, and plucks his way through “À la Claire Fontaine" and “The Land of the Silver Birch,” the songs his grandfather used to play for him when it was late, and his mother was still doing the dishes and all she needed was Patrick out from under her feet. The strings feel good as they buzz against the pads of his fingers, but he has to stop entirely too quickly, his fingers sore and his head buzzing with memories, the slow creep of which is only getting faster the longer he stays in one place. 

He puts the guitar back in its cupboard, on the off chance that it’s owner should come looking and want to claim it again discreetly, but. He finds himself taking it out more and more often in the evenings, after he’s brought the cows into the barn and dinner is done and there’s nothing to do but think, and sit, and talk through his thoughts with his mother, and Rachel, who still look at him like a china doll on the edge of shattering. 

Eventually, the nightmares lessen, until he’s having them every other day, and then maybe two or three days go by before he’s waking himself up with a scream, drenched in a cold sweat that leaves him feeling absolutely disgusting, unable to sleep again until it’s light enough in the sky that he can rise and shower without disturbing anybody further. His days adopt a semblance of a pattern. He even begins to meet new people, resettle himself in his body so that, in time, his brain starts to feel less like it’s always rattling around in his head a little. 

Andrew joins Patrick in the backfields, twinging up long rolls of hay and pulling down enough feed corn for the cows, and Patrick quickly learns he isn’t the kind of man who needs to talk much. When Patrick asks him polite questions while they work their way through the line of milk cows, he answers with funny anecdotes and doting, loving words about Rachel. They’d met when she was working in town as a preschool teacher, and Andrew had started coming by to pick up his niece and nephew. It was, according to him, love at first sight. 

It’s the kind of happy story he’d always wanted for Rachel, had once thought he’d be able to give to her, and later that night, when the stars wink on and dinner is done and Patrick’s got the guitar back in his hands, he decides to apologize to her for his inability to give her that. He thinks maybe he owes her an explanation, however small. 

“Hey, Patty,” she says, leaning over to pat him on the knee as she slides into the rocking chair across from him. She’s been moving more slowly these days, and Patrick worries that the long, hard days are starting to catch up with her.

“You should take better care of yourself,” he says, and then grimaces, because of course that’s not how he meant to say it. He clears his throat and tries again. “I mean. You should take tomorrow off, take it easy, stay inside. It doesn’t do you much good to retire from teaching just to come here and work all day with me, and spend the days you aren’t here busting your hump with my mom, taking care of Gramps.”

“I didn’t ‘retire’. I’m staying home to take care of this little one,” her hand rests on the top of her belly. “Besides, it doesn’t mean I’m incapable of doing _anything._ You are my family, and families help.”

His heart swells, and he forces himself to speak around the sudden lump in his throat. “But you’re not just doing _anything,_ Rach. You’re trying to do everything, and it’s wearing you out.”

She narrows her eyes and looks at him, a small, sly smile dancing over the corner of her mouth. “Worn out, huh?”

He blushes and shrugs. “You once told me saying ‘tired’ was tantamount to saying ‘ugly.’ And you’re the furthest thing from ugly. But you _do_ look tired, so ‘worn out’ seemed like the better choice.”

Immediately, her smile shifts into a kind, soft thing, a cool touch to a fevered brow, and it strikes him that both of the people he’s loved most in his life share the ability to do that, to mold and move their faces like clay into a thousand permutations of emotion, almost without thinking. “You’re sweet. What are you playing? It sounds new for you.”

He, admittedly, doesn’t have a huge repertoire, and of course Rachel’s heard it all by now. “It’s La Vie en Rose,” he says quietly, strumming his way through the chorus before he puts a palm to the strings and talks to the whitewashed banister of the porch, to the open country sky he’d spent so many years missing when the nights got darkest. “I went to Paris, right before — before the last campaign. I was supposed to be there a week, time to rest and collect my head before heading back to my squad.”

“That sounds nice,” Rachel says softly, her voice far away, and he wonders not for the first time what’s going on in her head right now.

“It was. It was...more than nice.” He takes a deep breath and takes the chance to lower that wall he keeps specifically built between himself and his memories of Paris. He remembers the long line of David’s neck the first time he’d seen him across the smoky club. The way his fingers had felt curled against Patrick’s in the illicit privacy of his coat pocket, how he’d felt when he’d pressed his side against David’s but kept his eyes glued to The Rose. 

It’s this last one that he holds tightest to, the one that he breathes into the happy places of his memory, becomes determined to look at without feeling any of the shredding grief that accompanies so many other moments of thinking about David.

It’s perhaps the cruelest irony he’s ever faced that the happiest week of his life is one of the most painful for him to remember. 

“Is that where you heard this song?” Rachel pulls him out of himself and puts him back on the path of the story he’d been telling.

“Yes. We went to the cabaret on my last night—” 

“— we?”

“A... friend and I. Several friends and I, actually. The last act that night was the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, taking her clothes off by single candlelight.” Patrick thinks briefly about the Patrick from long ago, who wouldn’t have been able to say this to Rachel without tripping over his tongue and blushing deeply enough to be seen even in the quickly fading evening light. 

“That sounds thrilling,” Rachel says sincerely, and Patrick explains that it was. Tells Rachel about the final reveal, how he’d felt sitting in the seat watching The Rose bare herself for an entire theatre full of people, tries to capture what it’d felt like to be a recipient of such instantaneous and insistent bravery. 

“Anyway,” Patrick trails off, his fingers still making soft, mindless music on the guitar. “It was the best night of the trip. I imagine that song will always remind me just a little bit of that moment.”

“And what about you friend? The one you went with? Have you heard from her, since everything ended?”

She so clearly doesn’t mean to hurt him; doesn’t realize she’s thrown a grenade right into the middle of the careful peace the night had built around them. Because no, of course he hasn’t heard from ‘her,’ because there is no ‘her.’ There is only David. There _was_ only David. Because the Universe is cruel, and has decided that all the good deeds in the world aren’t enough to bring back to him the only thing he’s ever truly wanted.

“No, I haven’t heard from him,” Patrick says, and he lets the last word hang in between them until Rachel makes a little humming sound and he hears the gentle creak of the wooden rocker gliders against the porch planks. He doesn’t add anything else, but he doesn’t know that he necessarily needs to. Rachel has known the corners of his heart longer than anyone else.

“Well,” she says, her voice full of that little note of hope in her voice that’s always endeared her so strongly to Patrick. They’re both optimists in a world set against it. Or. They both used to be that way. “It hasn’t been long. There’s still so much upheaval out there, Patty. Give it time, maybe he’s still just finding a way to get in touch.”

He swallows a scoff and the first several words that fly to the tip of his tongue, most of which look like some variant on _I doubt it._ Instead, he makes a little humming noise of his own and doesn’t add anything else.

If he says what he’s thinking out loud, gives it the weight of breath and the force of speech, it becomes real. And Patrick is so tired of being brave.

Because the truth was, he’d caught Eli. He’d cleared David’s name, and had even begun to hope against hope that when he got home, he’d find...something. A letter, a gift, the record of any kind of visit at all. 

He’d left David the note, and his coordinates, the only way he could afford to let David know where to go considering the engraver had charged by the letter. David wasn’t a stupid man, and Patrick knew there was no way he hadn’t seen the numbers, hadn’t found some way to figure out what they mean, why Patrick had left them, and every day that passed without bringing David to his doorstep felt more and more like a deliberate message not just from the universe at large but from David specifically — he doesn’t want to find Patrick. 

Patrick can’t blame him, really. It was why he’d fought so hard to find Eli — Patrick wagered the pain David would feel at waking up alone against the utter ruination he’d face if Eli went unapprehended. Only, it hadn’t seemed to matter and last Patrick had heard anything about it, the Rose name was floating across as many headlines as ever before disappearing into something akin to obscurity. 

Patrick tried to fix it, and failed. It’s a truth that sits inside him like cold metal, smooth and heavy and immoveable. The only choice he has now was to build something out of the ashes, something someone somewhere might say looks like a life, in the right light. 

He pulls his body from the rocker and presses a soft kiss to the top of Rachel’s head as he passes, his nose suddenly full of the familiar smell of her, and she reaches up to grab his hand, pressing the back of it to her cheek as he straightens. 

“I’m so, _so_ glad you’re home,” she says, and Patrick’s love for her shifts yet again, deepens as the scope of what he’d put her through, what he was still putting her through, while she continued to love him steadfastly, threatens to overwhelm him. He presses his lips together and nods, even though she’s not looking at him.

“I am, too.”

“You’re — you’re sure about that?” She sounds scared to ask, and Patrick doesn’t blame her. He’s scared of the answer.

“I... I am. I’m trying to be. I’m sure about being so damn happy to see you, though,” he says, and he feels her nod, the soft glide of her cheek across his knuckles. 

“Go to bed, Patty. Dawn will be here before you know it, and I know you’ll be racing it to greet the day.”

He glides the tip of his index finger out to trace the top of her cheekbone.

“Don’t you stay up too late, Mrs. Franklin. Worn out, remember?”

“Like I could forget, you cad. Go to bed.” 

For the first time in a long time, laughter follows him to bed that night. 

*

Time ceases to matter when every day looks like the one that came before it, although it’s a different kind of monotony than Patrick faced at the front. The things he does with his hands now are about creation, about growth and life and production, and that difference alone is enough to make the hours pass in a generically pleasant haze, rather than a tortuous slog. He starts to think, at the time’s when his heart is lightest and the dust feels like it’s been swept from the corners of his brain, that he could find an existence here. Not a happiness, maybe, or a joy, but. A contentment here, with Rachel, and Andrew, and the baby and the land. 

He’s just finished bringing the cows in when he hears Rachel’s voice on the front porch, talking to someone. He crosses to the sink to wash his hands and listens for the responding voice. His mother just left that morning, and Andrew isn’t going to be done at the garage until well after dark — business has been booming lately, thanks in large part to the influx of returning GIs and every last one’s desire to own a new car. He hears Rachel pause, so he’s sure someone must be speaking, but he can’t quite make it out under the rush of water from the tap, and by the time he rushes to turn it off, the other person is done. 

He’s making his way through the living room when he finally has to face the reality that he’s gone insane because. Well.

He swears the voice he can hear is David’s. 

He’s cemented to the spot, his heart suddenly racing so fast in his chest that there’s a thin edge of black pressing in around the edges of his vision. He hasn’t heard David’s voice in so long, and so much has happened in the meantime that he no longer trusts his brain on the matter, no longer believes he hasn’t somehow pushed the memory of David’s low, gravely timbre to the realm of half-truths. 

But then the person speaks again, and it sounds _so much_ like David’s voice. And the person is talking about going, saying his name and something about needing to go back to town, and through the rest of his days he won’t remember the steps that got him across the living room, the movement of his body through the screen door. He’ll remember standing in the living room, the accumulated quilts and pillows and Hummel statues that are the collected detritus of his entire life, and then he’s outside. He’s outside and the air is clear and the wood squeaks under his feet as he watches a fleeing pair of broad shoulders, a dark head of hair slowly disappearing from the dim circle of porch light.

“David?”

Even when the person stops moving, frozen so fast Patrick’s afraid he’ll go tripping ass over elbow, Patrick still doesn’t think he has the right of it. There’s just no way. He’s long stopped believing in impossibilities. 

This can’t be happening. The person will turn around and _not be David,_ introduce himself and Patrick will apologize and everything will return to the way it was five minutes ago, his world peacefully empty and his hands stinking of cattle. 

It isn’t a stranger, speaking his name. 

It’s David. 

David. Skinnier, paler, more drawn and far more exhausted than anyone should look, pale shadows under his eyes and a leanness to his frame that speaks to illness, to grief. A leanness Patrick recognizes from the shadows of the men he’s fought with his entire adult life, brought on by hardship.

“Hello, Patrick,” he hears, and the voice is quiet, but it is unmistakably David’s. It’s the most beautiful sound Patrick never thought he’d hear again, and even as he thinks the thought that he wants more, wants to hear it again, wants to drown in the sound of David Rose’s voice before he opens his mouth to speak, David _does_ speak, and Patrick starts to hear what he’s saying. “I was just. Talking to Rachel a little. It’s good to see you. Congratulations on — starting a family.” 

David is an idiot. Patrick is an idiot. Of course David doesn’t understand, and although it pokes at Patrick that even after everything, David would believe he could tuck this part of his heart back away and shove himself back into a life he no longer fit, he refuses to blame David for thinking it. Especially when he hears the attempt at sincere kindness when David says, “That’s wonderful, Patrick. Really. I couldn’t be happier for you! The happiest!”

And it’s enough. 

There are so many conversations he and David need to have, so many words tripping over the end of his tongue that he knows if he gives credence to any of them, they won’t stop until he’s been filled in on every detail of David’s life since Patrick lightly pulled the door of their hotel room closed behind him. So he decides to put his tongue to much better use.

“You’re going to be su—” David is still talking when Patrick sweeps him up in a kiss, presses his lips to David’s with a biting force. The heat of him is overwhelming, and Patrick is drawn six months into the past, to the last time they did this, David’s big hands cupping his face, his long body hard against his, the strength in his touch belied by the warmth of him, the _gentility_ of him. 

The kiss is one of shock, one of surprise, one of hope realized and love remembered. David relaxes all at once against him and his mouth tastes of love, and tears, and Patrick wants to wrap his arms around him and never let go; wants to protect David at all costs, against anything and everything that could hurt him. That need is compounded by tenderness, so much tenderness, the desire to calm David’s trembling, to stop his tears. 

Patrick has never had a kiss that tastes like time, lost and regained, and he can tell by the way David kisses him and he kisses David that they aren’t the same men who fell in love in Paris, and are still somehow inexplicably more themselves, and more in love with one another. And because time has lost all meaning, Patrick kisses David until he hears Rachel’s small cough from the porch behind him. 

He turns to face her, and can’t even begin to imagine what a mess he must look like, what she must be thinking. He opens his mouth to explain, but she holds up a hand, her smile hesitant but true. 

“So _this_ is the cabaret friend,” she says. He’s known her since pigtails and short pants, since they came up to their mama’s knees and played hopscotch together. She knows him better than anyone in this world, and her smile grows sparkling, full of such delight, such _joy._ “It’s nice to meet you, David.” 

“You told her about me?” David asks, so sweetly surprised, and Patrick strokes David’s face gently, unable to believe that this is happening. That David is standing here before him.

“Not everything. Not yet,” Patrick whispers, and David’s eyes flicker to his, studying him, so nervous and so beautiful Patrick can’t bear to see him so. He laces their fingers, brings their hands to his mouth. “Not yet,” he says again.

Rachel’s gaze flicks back and forth between them. She’s smiling so hard her eyes are sparkling with tears, and she’s clasped her hands to her chest, beaming at them. “Well, David? Coming inside for a piece of icebox cake?”

“I’ve never said no to cake before,” David whispers, from where he’s still leaning against the banister, his voice low and liquid like honey. Patrick reaches back for his hand, and the fact that he’s able to take it — that David is here, really here, back in his life — is the sweetest dessert he’ll ever need.

*

The kitchen of his family’s home has always been a place of refuge, of comfort. Patrick had learned that at his mother’s knee, every winter they spent in the tiny homestead on this very land, when the kitchen stove was the only thing that kept you alive on those deep, dark winter nights. In time, after his father had returned from the war, they’d torn down the old homestead and the church had helped them build a proper house, Patrick eleven and grown enough to swing a hammer, Rachel excited to finally help Mama with the lemonade. Those had been long, warm days of fellowship, of comfort, and in the end the house had been his mother’s dream realized, two stories, running pipes for water, proper glass pane windows and new furniture to boot. 

Patrick was an only child, had his run of the house to do as he pleased, but no matter where his adventures took him he always somehow ended up right back here in his mother’s kitchen. It didn’t matter that Mom was in town now to help grandpa, Patrick would always look at the window over the kitchen sink, the old rumbling refrigerator, and imagine his mother and her apple pies, her pot roasts and her potatoes. 

And now, he has a new memory to add to the mix. He has _David._

He can’t believe it, and every time his eyes stray away they jerk back, as if looking away meant David would go up in smoke. David’s hand keeps squeezing his, so Patrick thinks maybe he understands, maybe he isn’t completely crazy to think it. He wants to crawl under David’s skin, tuck himself against the hollow of his throat and never leave, never move another inch. 

He gasps for air, and David shakes his head, says, “Nope, no,” but it’s too late because his face is crumpling and Patrick’s is too, and he wraps his arms as tightly as he can around David’s shoulders. David hugs him back just as tightly, the kind of hug that hurts, the kind of hug that lovers gave one another after being away at war, and he fists his fingers in the back of David’s hair and David is leaving wet tears on his neck, and he can hear Rachel bustling around the living room, but he can’t move, he can’t look away for one goddamned second.

The hug doesn’t end. One rolls right into another, then a third, and eventually they end up sitting side by side at the table, but David can’t keep his arm from around him, and Patrick can’t let go of his hand. David hasn’t stopped trembling, and Patrick feels the way his limbs shake, the way his hands won’t stop moving, even laced through his. Patrick gives into his desire to tuck his face there against David’s neck, and David presses kisses to his temple, to his hair. “How are you here?” he whispers, awe in his voice, and Patrick understands. God. He understands.

“I almost wasn’t,” he hears himself say, and David makes a terrible noise, and Patrick is shaking now too, the scent of David’s skin reminding him of everything he gave up. Everything he almost lost forever. “David. David, I didn’t leave because I wanted to.”

“Shh, no, I know,” and David shouldn’t sound like he’s choking on his tears, that’s what Patrick _did to him,_ what he’s been doing to him for months now. 

“You’re so thin,” Patrick says, and lifts his head up to cup David’s cheek, stroke there against his stubble. “David, why are you so thin?”

“You know why,” David says, turning his face to kiss the palm of his hand. To hide his grief. “You left. You left, and I thought — I thought you were dead.”

“I’m so sorry,” because what else could he say? What else could he possibly say? He’d known David was home, safe, cared for. David didn’t have the same luxury. Patrick had left him to go _fight a war,_ and the thought had haunted him every time he’d closed his eyes. “David, I have so much to tell you. So much of what happened.”

“You left me the coordinates,” David says, eyes wet and red. “You told me where to find you. I almost — I almost didn’t. I didn’t know they were coordinates.”

“It’s okay,” Patrick whispers, stroking David’s cheek restlessly. “It’s alright. We found each other.”

“What if Alexis had never seen it? What if I’d left the case in Paris? I would have lost you. I would have lost you forever,” David gasps, and Patrick hugs him as tightly as he can. David fists his fingers in the back of Patrick’s sweater, burying his face there against his neck. “Oh God. You’re here. You’re here in front of me.”

“I’m here in front of you,” Patrick returns, and kisses him, kisses him with everything inside of him, with all the love he could possibly give him. “Baby, I’m right here in front of you. Nothing is ever going to take me away from you again.”

It’s his deepest truth, as strong and sturdy as the very bones in his body. Nothing would ever willingly take him from David’s side again. He knows it like he knows his name, like he knows his face. Their lips pull apart and they take turns breathing one another’s oxygen, foreheads pressed together. “I can’t believe I almost lost you,” David whispers, and Patrick’s thumb traces an arc across his cheekbone.

“You found me, David,” Patrick says in return, his lips moving so softly against David’s. “Over and over and over again, you found me.” 

David hiccups in a sob, and then so does Patrick, and then they’re crying all over again, desperate, quiet sobs as they grasp at each other and press together so tightly it’s hard to tell where David ends and Patrick begins. Patrick presses his lips to David’s temple, feels his tears get caught in the short hairs there, and thanks whatever force in the universe has brought David back to him. 

Two gentle taps at the door frame and Rachel looks apologetic, in her gentle way that reminded Patrick so much of his mother. They pull apart, just far enough that Patrick is able to angle his body towards Rachel and give her a grateful smile. “How’s the cake, you two?” Her eyes fall to the plates still in front of them, completely untouched

David takes a quick bite and there’s not a shred of falsity in his voice when he firmly says, “it’s delicious. Possibly the best blueberry lemon icebox cake I’ve ever tasted.”

Rachel’s smile is soft, and the one David gives her in return is tentative, and Patrick feels a welling up of so many emotions inside his chest that he’s afraid it’s going to crack him open from the inside out. “I think I’m going to head back to town, if that’s alright. Andrew just called, and the garage gave him the chance to work a double, so he’s going to take it.”

“Are you sure?” Patrick’s voice is immediately laced with worry. It’s not that he doesn’t trust Rachel, but it’s dark and it’s not the shortest, or straightest, drive back into town. “Let me take you.”

She waves away the words before they’ve even left his mouth completely. “Nonsense. It’s a drive I’ve made a million times, I’m just going to get home and get to sleep. Leave you two to catch up.” Her smile takes on the slightest edge at the corner, sharpening enough to make Patrick blush. “You’ll call if you need anything? Me, or your mom? No trying to tough-guy it out if you — if anything happens.” She cuts herself off and Patrick can only guess at what the end of that sentence would have been: “if you wake up crying” or “if you thrash yourself out of bed again” or “if you scream yourself hoarse.”

He nods, and keeps his eyes trained on Rachel, even as he feels David’s eyes burning into his profile, can see out of the corner of his eye the way David’s brow furrows and his mouth sets in a line of concern. “I promise, Rach. You’re the first on the phone tree.”

She nods resolutely and crosses the kitchen to plant a tender kiss to the top of his head. She bends down to wrap her arms around David’s shoulders, slightly awkward but full of a sincerity that makes David’s eyes shine when she pulls away. “It was so good to meet you, David Rose. You’ll be around for a little bit, yeah? Andrew will be off the day after tomorrow and we’ll have a cookout?”

David looks to Patrick, who shrugs and raises his eyebrows, putting the ball back in David’s court. He tries not to let his head spin with the prospect of a tomorrow, and a day after tomorrow, and a tomorrow after that, an infinity of tomorrows — all with David at his side.

“That would be really lovely,” David says, and there’s a moment where they’re all just smiling at each other, Rachel’s hand on Patrick’s shoulder, David’s hand on his thigh, Patrick’s hand wrapped around David’s in between their cake plates. It’s the first time in his entire life that Patrick can remember feeling a combination of joy, settled rightness, hope for the future and resolute satisfaction about the past. He wants to bottle it and spend the rest of his life sipping on this feeling. 

“You two have a good night. Make sure you lock the front door,” she says out of habit, like it’s her home, too.

 _It might as well be,_ Patrick thought, which wasn’t the first time he’d thought that, but it was the first time it came with the hint of a plan behind it, the subtle scratching of a next step, a change in the wind that could carry Patrick away with it. 

“Will do,” he says, and then Rachel is gone, and David’s mouth is back on his, hungry and insistent, full of so much need that Patrick can’t hold back the sound that cracks free from his ribcage, a moan that’s a sob and a benediction all at once. David’s hands come to cup the sides of his face, and Patrick’s hands paw at his waist, desperate to pull him closer, to eliminate the inches between them that, after so long apart, seem especially egregious. 

“I missed you,” David says when they break apart long enough for David to snake his arms around Patrick’s neck, turning his head in the opposite direction and nipping at his ear before claiming his mouth in another searing kiss. 

“I missed you,” Patrick says in return when he breaks the kiss to run his teeth along the underside of David’s jaw, to press his lips is a soft line back up the column of his neck. He’s unsure if it’s been seconds, or minutes, or years that he’s had his lips pressed to David’s, warm and soft and tasting vaguely of blueberries. David is here, and he’s real, and he came for Patrick even after everything Patrick did, and dear God that is enough. It’s more than enough. It’s everything. 

The next time they break the kiss, neither of them say anything. 

Patrick takes David’s hand and pulls him to his feet, towing him behind as he begins the process of latching the screens and shutting the windows, making sure that the exterior lights are turned off.

He pulls David in close behind him as they make their way up the stairs, Patrick’s fingers laced through his as he guides David’s hands to his waist. They’re so close it’s hard to walk without stumbling, and Patrick does a few times sincerely and then one more time just to feel the way David’s hands clench around his waist, steadying and safe. 

They’re just about to cross the threshold into Patrick’s room when he stops. He can feel David’s breath, warm where it brushes across the back of his neck, and he tightens his grip on David’s fingers. He can feel the thick silver cuffs David had worn in Paris, and they center him, somehow, reminding him to take a deep breath, that this is the same David who had taken care of him, had opened him up to the possibility of an entirely different life in the span of six days. 

“It’s not exactly the Gaston,” Patrick says, and he’s not sure why these are the words that come tumbling out, because he’s not really worried that David cares about any of that, it’s just that. Maybe he’s worried a tiny bit that David cares about that. A little. 

“You’re not at the Gaston,” David says, nuzzling at the curve where Patrick’s nose slopes into his shoulder, and Patrick shivers. He licks his suddenly very dry lips before speaking again.

“I never really thought I’d get the chance to see you here.”

“I didn’t either. Then again, I didn’t really think I’d get the chance to see you again _anywhere._ ” He presses a soft kiss to the skin right beneath Patrick’s ear, and Patrick hums, tilting his head towards the feeling. He spins in David’s arms and wraps his own around David’s neck.

“I love you, David.” And he’s terrifyingly aware that he’s never said that before, thinks of the weight of saying it now, and decides that it doesn’t outweigh the months and miles that have kept them apart already. 

David looks _gutted,_ like Patrick has taken a knife to his midsection, and it’s the worst thing in a series of worst things, and Patrick is already saying, “No, wait, I’m sorry,” when David shakes his head, clenching his eyes closed. Tears spill over onto his cheeks again, they never really _stopped,_ but the way he wraps his arms around Patrick’s neck, burying his face there against his cheek, means everything. He says, “Baby, no, please, I didn’t mean to hurt you,” and David shakes his head again, shuddering there against him. 

“You didn’t. You — I didn’t think someone would ever — but you’re here. I found you, we found each other.” David pulls away just enough to cup his face with one hand, to kiss him once, twice, three times. He tastes like tears, like grief, like joy. “I love you, Patrick. I love you more than anything, and anyone.”

It feels like the sun coming up in his ribs, and he dries David’s face with his palms, strokes his hair, his cheek, his jaw. “Yeah?”

“You’re everything to me. You’re the rest of my life,” David says, and Patrick is quietly, desperately, unmade. 

He takes those long, beautiful hands in his, and kisses each knuckle, and pulls David gently, gently, over the threshold into his bedroom.

Later, when Patrick thinks back on this moment, he’ll never quite be able to remember it all. Their lovemaking passes in moments of unhurried tenderness and racing passion. Clothes melt away as if they never were. Patrick presses his lips to the line of David’s shoulders, the hollow of his throat, his too-prominent ribs and starkly jutting him bones. He sinks to his knees and this, too, is easy; giving David pleasure will always be the easiest thing he’s ever done. David isn’t like the way he was the last time Patrick did this — if Patrick has been pared back, carved out until the core of him lay exposed, so has David. He calls out and sobs, and buries his fingers in Patrick’s hair, and shudders and shakes and shows Patrick with his body just how much he loves him. Just how much he missed him. When David finishes, Patrick lets it fill his mouth, drip down the back of his throat, swallows this part of David that belongs to Patrick now.

And before he has time to catch another breath, David is hauling him onto the bed, pushing him onto his back, pressing kisses to the dark circles under his eyes, the heaving skin above his ribs, the pale skin where his hip meets his thigh. His lips are moving and it’s not kisses, it’s words, words Patrick can’t hear but intimately understands because he feels them, too.

David swallows him, and Patrick lets tears pour out of the corners of his eyes as his hands find David’s hair, the tops of his shoulders, the back of his neck, pawing at any available stretch of flesh he can reach, because he doesn’t want to spend another single second of his life not touching David. He comes too quickly, his voice echoing back to him off the walls of his childhood home, muttered cries of “yes” and “God” and “David” that cut off into choked cries and a hoarse litany of “thank you”s. 

David collapses across his chest, and that’s what Patrick remembers most, later on down the line of years. The way David’s head lands heavy over his heart, the sweep of his hair falling over his temple, the sweat beading his skin and the way his eyes kept closing, only to jerk back to awareness, as if too scared to fall asleep here on top of him and let this all be a dream. He buries his fingers in David’s hair and fists it gently, and David squirms up against him, his nose under Patrick’s jaw, his racing heart next to Patrick’s. 

They rest there together, though they don’t really sleep. Too many emotions, too much grief, too much adrenaline. The sun has started to coast its way down the sky, down behind the familiar line of the barn Patrick helped raise when he was a boy, the farmland he had tilled and sweated and bled for so many years ago. Their skin cools, and eventually David lifts up from him, just enough to tug the quilt from the bottom of the bed over them, the quilt that had been on his bed as long as Patrick could remember; the quilt he had thought about more than once over the years, in trenches and freezing cold caves, miserable and desperate for home.

He runs his fingers through David’s hair, and listens to him breathe, and can’t believe they’re here. Can’t believe they made it back together, across the world from where they were. 

David smells like the Gaston. Or maybe, the Gaston always smelled of David. 

The sun settles and the sky darkens, and the shadows in the room cling in deeper tendrils. Patrick looks down, only to find David already looking up at him.

The second time is not the same flavor as the first. They come together like a storm, battering against each other like two ships in choppy waves. David rears up over him and they’re kissing so frantically that Patrick can’t catch his breath, can’t pull away for even a moment for air. David’s big hands are all over him, stroking him, his hips and thighs, then down under the crooks of his knees. He lifts Patrick’s legs up, over and around his waist, and then they’re thrusting against each other with such wild abandon that Patrick cries out. 

“Fuck me, fuck me,” he begs.

David moans above him, says, “I am fucking you honey, feel me, do you feel me?”

God, how could he not? David’s big cock, stroking along the crease of his thigh, rutting against Patrick’s own hot length. Moving together, jerking together, skin catching on skin, and David snarls into his shoulder, “Do you have slick?”

“No,” Patrick gasps, and David rears up, spits in his hand, and drops it down between them to catch them both in his grip.

The feeling of it is almost more than he can stand. His eyes roll back and he moans, long and loud and pitiful, and David does it again, slicking them up just enough to make the fucking good. And oh, God, _it’s so good._ Patrick’s hands clutch at David’s back, clawing and desperate, as their foreheads press together. Even in the dark, Patrick can see it, the shape of David’s hand wrapping around them both, jerking them both off together, and it’s perfectly lewd, inexpressibly hot, and Patrick’s hips stutter up. 

David growls, the sound a physical force in the small space between them, and Patrick does it again, fucking into David’s fist in earnest.

His mind swims, the connected yet distinct pressure of David’s fingers around him, David’s cock on his, a million points of sensory input that brighten and build together until the only thing that Patrick feels is _everything._

David drops down and they crash together again, harder than before, kissing like the world is ending, like it’ll be gone tomorrow and they only have tonight. He cries out, fisting his fingers in David’s hair, and David growls low in his throat and bites his throat, his neck, his shoulder, painful pinches of his skin that burn down to Patrick’s pulse point, his nipples, his cock. He sobs and David works them harder, and Patrick’s knee skids up his flank as he tries to hold on, tries to hold on. 

“Come on, honey,” David says, lapping at the salt beaded on Patrick’s skin, the sweat running in rivulets between them. “Come on; you’re so hard. God, you’re so hard for me, _you’re so beautiful._ You’re shaking, but it’s alright, I’ve got you. Come on, honey, come on, give it to me.”

Patrick’s hips stutter once, twice, and David reaches down with the other hand and tugs at his balls and Patrick is _done._ Pleasure implodes in him, fanning from the cradle of his hips and out, the contractions of his pleasure sending his hips jerking, his feet skidding against the sheets and his back bowed. David kisses him through it, through every cry, and then he adds to the mess between them, moaning low and deep as he comes over Patrick’s belly and chest.

Patrick’s sobbing on each breath, and David whispers, “Shh, shh honey,” and Patrick’s fingers scrabble over David’s shoulders, his arms, up to his hair. They kiss, wet smeared between them, sloppy and beautiful, and David’s solid chest crushes him into the bed, and it’s everything Patrick ever wanted in this world. He has no idea what he did to deserve this, only that to have it, now at the end of days, brings him a peace he hasn’t felt in so very, very long. 

His breathing starts to get shaky and David drags him even closer, stroking his fingers gently over Patrick’s heaving back and tugging the blankets back over them. He hides his face in David’s shoulder and David murmurs to him, low, wordless hums of love, so much love. “You’re here,” Patrick gasps, and David thumbs under his eyes, gentle, gentle. 

“I’m here,” he whispers, and kisses their linked fingers. “Rest. Rest for a little while.”

“I can’t,” Patrick says, choking on emotion. “If — if I close my eyes it’ll all have been a dream.”

“Shhh,” David says, his lips buzzing softly against Patrick’s temple. “Shh, Patrick,” his lips trace down to the shell of his ear, making quiet susurrations as his hands continue to trail long, sweeping circles over the expanse of Patrick’s back. 

Patrick doesn’t want to close his eyes. The longer he stays here, awake, David’s heartbeat under the palm of his hand, David’s breath brushing gently across the crest of his cheek, the longer he’ll be able to hold on to a reality he never thought he’d get. 

Patrick doesn't want his breath to slow, his heartbeat to steady, his bones and his muscles to fuse together and begin to sink into the mattress.

Patrick doesn’t want to sleep, but he does, his body still pressed to David’s as the night stars burn the firmament overhead, and David’s hands somehow never stop moving over his back. 

*

Patrick twitches and feels pins of ice race up his arms and legs. He tries to open his eyes, and he can’t, and when he breathes his lungs feel so cold they’re on fire again. He can hear it, the subtle grinding of train wheels on frosty, metal tracks and there’s adrenaline in his mouth, cold and bitter. The muscles in his back spasm, locking together into one solid web of increasingly painful tension. He opens his mouth to scream, to call for help, and the only thing he manages to do is bite down on his tongue, the warm coppery taste of blood flooding his mouth. He moans, the muscles in his thighs locking as tensely as the ones in his back, and he feels his body begin to vibrate. 

He hears David’s voice on the edge of his senses, and the cruelty of David, appearing in his dreams, is colder than the ice flowing through his veins...ice that’s retreating, as he feels a lightness come back into his limbs, feels his lungs beginning to circulate fresh oxygen, David’s voice steadily insistent in his ears, the only part of the dream that doesn’t alter as he comes more and more back into his body.

Because it’s not a dream. David is here, voice quiet and scratchy as he repeats Patrick’s name, brushes his thumbs across the crest of Patrick’s cheeks, looks down at him with wide, terrified eyes. 

“Patrick?”

Patrick’s doesn’t say anything, just buries his face in the crook of David’s neck and sobs. He’d thought...hadn't wanted to believe, but — “You’re here,” he gasps, and David’s face creases with worry. 

He sits up enough to get the lamp put on, but Patrick is nearly vibrating out of his skin and when it becomes clear to the both of them that they won’t be going back to sleep, David wraps him in the quilt and pulls him downstairs to the kitchen. He sits at his mother’s kitchen table and watches David putter around the kitchen as if he owns it, in nothing but his skin. He opens cabinets here and there, looking for what he needs, and Patrick watches the muscles play under his skin, the way his legs flex when he opens the ice box for the milk. The sight of David, naked and in his kitchen, raises the lump in his throat and reduces his ability to speak to zero.

The kettle whistles and David sets a mug in front of him, steaming and hot and smelling of grassy chamomile and honey. He’s shaking as he wraps his hands around it, and then David is pulling a kitchen chair next to him and wrapping his arms around him exactly the same way, warming him from the inside. The salt of his tears, of his sweat, feel tight on his skin, and his eyes are burning so he closes them, sets his cheek there on David’s arm, holding him so tightly. 

It takes a while, a long while, for the sweaty grip of the dream to ease, for him to _feel_ he’s at home, not just _know_ it. He doesn’t dare look at David, but David seems to sense that he’s on more even keel now, because he presses kisses to the bare line of Patrick’s shoulder peeking up from the quilt and whispers, “Do you want to talk about it?”

Patrick’s chin trembles terribly. “I owe you so many answers.”

“You don’t.”

Patrick shakes his head. “I didn’t know it was you. When — when you bought me that drink. When you invited me to go to your club. You were a handsome man who saw something in me that I couldn’t recognize for myself. You were like starlight, and I just — I wanted to follow you anywhere you’d take me.” His voice breaks and he looks down into the filmy, frothy surface of the tea. “I wanted you, David.”  
  
“I wanted you,” David whispers, and runs his fingers gently through the short hairs over Patrick’s ear, turning his face so their eyes can meet. “I saw you, and I wanted you. There was always something about you."

“I didn’t recognize the connection, not right away. I’d just gotten reassigned. I only looked through the files once. If I had, I could have stopped this from happening.”

David clearly doesn’t understand what he’s trying to say, and Patrick isn’t explaining it well. He scrubs the heel of his hand over his eye, his scalp. “David. There’s so much you don’t know.”

“Then tell me, Patrick. Explain it, so I can understand.”

Grief tears through him. “You’ll hate me when I do.”

David goes still, then exhales a low, long breath. “There is nothing you could ever say that would make me hate you.”

“You don’t know the things I’ve done.”

“The things you were asked to do. The things you were made to do, in a cruel war against cruel people.” Patrick is shaking his head but David catches his chin, turns him in his arms. “Patrick. You kept yourself alive. That’s all that matters.”

He looks into David’s gorgeous, heavy dark eyes, smudged with sleepless nights, too big in his face, and for a moment wishes he could take a step back in time, take the Patrick of a year ago by the shoulders, and shake him until he saw sense. 

It’s the hardest thing he’s ever done, to look David in the eye, but he does. David is owed nothing less than that. “Your family lost everything because of me.”

“ _Honey,_ ” David breathes, and rubs his thumb gently along Patrick’s cheekbone. “What are you talking about?”

“I was in Paris, I’d been given R&R, because they were reassigning me. I was getting moved to a new unit, I’d be leading a group of art historians and scientists, to save the art of Europe.”

David goes still against him. “What?”

“I didn’t know you were a gallerist,” Patrick says, suddenly desperate to be understood, even as he knows that what he is about to say is going to drive a wedge between them. That David is going to turn and walk away from him, after it’s done. He also knows that he can’t spend one more moment in David’s arms without telling him. “I didn’t know.”

“I know you didn’t,” David says, gently. “I know that.”

“You kept mentioning Eli. He called you, do you remember? I was there, at the Gaston, when he did. And then later, with your assistant.”

“What are you trying to say, Patrick?”

“I went back to the hostel to get my things. The day Alexis arrived. I went back because you’d asked me to stay with you,” and Patrick’s breath is hitching so violently he can barely speak, sobs caught in his throat like butterflies in a net, batting to get free. “I couldn’t remember where I’d heard his name. But my commander had given me the files of my new assignment, and he was there. He was one of the men I’d been tasked with chasing down.”

David sucks in a sharp breath, stunned, and Patrick turns in the chair, the blanket falling down from his shoulders as he reaches up to cup David’s face. “I didn’t know, baby. I didn’t know there was a connection to you.”

But David has caught his hands, squeezing them tightly before bringing them down from his face. He doesn’t let them go, instead laces their fingers tightly. His eyes are dark. “Start at the beginning.”

Patrick does.

He doesn’t know how long he speaks, only that the story comes like water freed from a dam. Finding out the connection between David and Eli — knowing that he had no choice to leave, after Mr. Rose called at the early hours of the morning and mentioned his difficulty in getting money out of the bank. Knowing that Eli had likely already done what countless other Nazi loyalists had done to Jewish families — used his clout, his politics, and his financial knowledge to launder the money out of US banks and into Swiss banks, because they didn’t share customer information with any international government or body of law, so there was no way to get any of it back. It was gone, like smoke. 

The months after. Taking his new team from town to town, picking up Eli’s trail before losing it again. Eli, abandoned by his new friends, now that he was being hunted by the US government, dropped as easily as a stone. Tracking him down in that awful, destroyed town, finding him sitting like King Midas in his hoard of treasure. 

The way Patrick lost control. The way he almost killed a man in cold blood.

David listens and doesn’t speak, and Patrick wishes he would do _something,_ say _anything,_ but David doesn’t. He watches Patrick’s mouth move, so Patrick keeps talking because the sound seems superior to the silence. He talks about waking up in the hospital, how it felt to float in and out of his body, the difference between night and day no longer one he needed to note.

He sees David’s eyes light up at this, thinks he sees something akin to familiarity flash there for a just a second before David seems to stifle it in favor of something more receptive. 

And then he’s home, in his story. He feels David shift in his chair, hears the creak of the older wood, and the scope of time rears up against them both. The time that passed so slowly, recounted so relatively quickly, and then, there comes the after.

“And Rachel and my mother have been wonderful, and Andrew has been a good egg, dealing with everything —”

“Andrew is Rachel’s…”

“Husband, yeah.” Patrick reaches for David’s hand and holds it, cups one of David’s in both of his and strokes his thumb over the knuckle at the base of David’s thumb. “I guess they got married not long before I took my R&R. Rachel wanted to wait for me, but…” They’d lived in a world where you didn’t wait, not for a soldier who may or may not be able to fill his place on the guest list. 

David nods. “Rachel seems incredibly sweet.”

“She’s…” Patrick trails off because he’s not quite sure how to put into words who and what Rachel is to him. He remembered the look on her face when he’d told her he had to leave, when he’d broken her heart, and he remembered her face when she’d wrapped her arms around him on the tarmac and welcomed him home and let him shake apart in a silent sob. The strength it must have taken to bridge the gap between those two people at the best of times, let alone with the world rip apart at the seams. “She’s my best friend.”

There’s a smile on David’s face that Patrick doesn’t quite understand, and his voice is choked on something when he says, “Those are nice to have.”

Patrick nods. “She and Andrew have been taking turns, staying out here when my mom can’t.”

“Your mom went to the city?”

“Yeah, to stay with my grandpa. He’s just not doing as well these days, I guess, and the house and land, it’s all too much.”

“So you’re going to stay.” David says it like it’s not a question. Maybe it isn’t.

He tries to find a way to say _I have nowhere else to go_ that doesn’t make him seem pathetic; tries to find a way to say _I don’t think I should be by myself right now_ that doesn’t make him seem damaged beyond could be repaired. 

But he is both those things. And keeping it from the one person he’s in love with seems like a poor decision, all things told. 

“It’s not a good idea. For me to be alone right now,” he confesses, his heart racing and his palms damp. “I was medically discharged from the Army. I didn’t — I’m not handling it. Well. Not the discharge, but. But everything else.”

David’s eyes crease with sympathy, with awful and aching tenderness. “Patrick.”

He feels nauseous from emotion, exhausted by the trembling in his shoulders, the ache in his head. “Why aren’t you angry?”

“Angry? About your discharge?”

“No, about — about _everything else._ I just told you that I was in charge of chasing Eli down.”

“Yes,” David says softly, stroking his thumb softly along Patrick’s chin.

“I couldn’t save your family’s money. It’s — it’s because of me. Because I wasn’t fast enough to stop him. I just told you I almost killed him in cold blood. Why aren’t you upset?”

“I am upset. I think I always will be,” David says, with so much tenderness, and brings the blanket back up over Patrick’s shoulder. “Eli is a snake, who used my family to lift himself up in the world. When it all happened, I blamed myself, but… but over the past months I started to see it with some perspective, perspective that I think you’ll see too, in time.” David squeezes his hands gently. “Patrick, you just told me you weren’t fast enough to stop him. You blame yourself, because you’re a good man. But honey, you didn’t make the choice to work for the enemy, to sell out your family friends, to barter and trade priceless works of art like junk store bric-a-brac. Eli took everything from my family, and that was a choice he made.”

Patrick opens his mouth to interrupt, but David waves his hand and Patrick shuts softly, his lips wrapped over his teeth. “You aren’t responsible for what he did, or what happened to my family. You’re the good man who tried to save us, who took on the world’s evil all alone. I was in love with you before, Patrick, but now… now I don’t think I could live another day without you.”

The weight that Patrick has carried with him, a weight like a stone slab strapped to his back, falls away. His breath explodes with a gasp, and David drags him in, drags him close, kissing him once, twice, three times, cradling his face in his hands. 

“Honey, I’m alive, and so are you, and we’re here, together. None of this is your fault, and — and I’ve realized that it isn’t my fault either.” He says it with so much wonder, and when their eyes meet again there’s a strength there in that dark brown, and Patrick falls helplessly in love with him all over again. “I think, for a long time, the world has been a place where people — where _we_ — did the things we did because we had to, for survival. And joy is survival. Honesty is survival. But, done in the kind of world we lived in…” he trails off, and when he speaks again, Patrick thinks it sounds more like he’s talking to himself. “I think it’s hard _not_ to feel guilty for thriving, when for so long you’ve been set on just surviving.” 

And Patrick doesn’t know how to trust it. Doesn’t know how to believe that David has heard everything he’s said, all the ugliest truths of himself that he’s laid bare, and not only hasn’t recoiled, has pressed forward. Pulled tighter. Treated Patrick’s life here as something worth knowing. He wonders if he’ll ever stop being entirely amazed by David Rose. 

He doesn’t know how to trust it, but he does. He plants a boot in the jaw of the voice in his brain that tells him he can’t, or shouldn’t, or won’t, or will regret it. Maybe all those things are true — he’s learned never to say never — but they aren’t true _now,_ and now is the moment he’s been longing for since he’d learned David survived the war. 

He reaches a soft hand up to cup David’s cheek, runs the pad of his thumb across David’s cheekbone. It’s something his body remembers doing in Paris, and he’s got the same hand and David has the same face but they’re not the same people and nothing is going to be the same anymore. 

He pulls David’s face to his and sighs his mouth open, gently. There’s no tongue, or teeth, or really even that much movement. Just Patrick’s lips, warm and dry against David’s, David’s hand rubbing a circle on the outside of Patrick’s knee. It’s the kind of kiss they’ll have a dozen more times, a hundred more times, a thousand more times until they become the kinds of kisses they always have. 

“Let me make you breakfast,” Patrick says, and he’s tired. He’s beyond tired. He’s exhausted into the depths of his bones, but for the first time in so, so long, there’s a contentment that accompanies it. A joy. The heavy weight of completeness that’s often unidentifiable until it fills you to the brim. 

“You don’t have to do that, sweetheart.”

Patrick shrugs, his smile small. “I know. I’d like to. And I have it on very good authority you’ve never been able to turn down a country breakfast.”

David’s smile grows by degrees, and he leans forward to press another slow kiss to Patrick’s lips. “I bought a store.”

Of all the things he expected David to say, that is certainly not one of them. David’s dark eyes are on him, studying him, infinitely gentle. “You bought a store?”

“Technically, Stevie bought it,” David says, as if it matters one bit. “I was — I was in a dark place. I thought you were dead, that I’d never see you again. And I kept thinking about what you’d said, that day we went walking along the Seine. That I didn’t have to live the life expected of me. So I — I bought a store, in this tiny little unincorporated township. It doesn’t have a flower shop or a coffee shop, but there’s a cafe across the street, and a mechanic, and just beyond there’s a park with a creek running through it. It’s nice. Peaceful.”

Rose Apothecary. Stocked with goods by local farmers and artisans. “A general store, but a very specific store,” he whispers.

David cups his face, so gently. “It was always meant to be ours.”

“Yes,” Patrick says, because it _was,_ born in their hearts long before the war came to an end, long before their hearts were broken in a thousand different pieces. 

“Will you come back with me?”

Patrick lays his head down on David’s chest, lets this beautiful man run his fingers through his hair, down his neck, down his back. “Yes,” he says on an exhale. 

David seems to go a fraction of a percent stiller. “You will?”

“Yes, David. Of course. A thousand times over.”

“But. What about,” he waves a hand around the kitchen, and Patrick lifts his head enough to shake it, to sit up and press his forehead to David’s, to place a kiss on each eyelid. 

“This place — this house was made for a family, David. A big, loud, messy family that can work the land and keep the roots strong.”

“And you don’t think we could do that?”

“I don’t think I _want_ to do that,” Patrick says, and the words catch him a little by surprise as he says them. “I have spent my entire life being a Brewer in a town built by Brewers. It’s comforting and it’s claustrophobic, all at once. And I think — I think it’s time I give myself a chance to be a Rose.

David’s faces scrunches inward and he shakes his head just a little at the bad metaphor. Patrick laughs, loud and full and clear and it feels like an airing out of the house after summer. “I’m ready to let my life here be done. For a long time now, it’s felt much more like an idea of living, an outline of how to live, than anything I want to spend the rest of my years inside. It’s not my life if I’m here, and you’re not. I survived the war to build a life _with you._ Our store, our town. The creek. I’d be a fool to have done all that, simply to say no to it now.”

David laces his fingers through his, and brings the back of his hand up to his mouth, and kisses his knuckles the very same way he did the night on the bridge. A year separates them from that moment to this one, but Patrick is suddenly right there all over again, the river flowing gently underneath them, David’s face beautiful in the streetlights as he kisses along Patrick’s pointer finger, his middle finger, and unmakes him. 

It doesn’t seem real. It doesn’t seem _possible that_ they’ve been given this moment. That they’ve been given this life. After all they’d suffered, to come out the other end and not meet more suffering — to _find one another_ — feels like the rarest gift, like a dream realized. David presses his cheek to Patrick’s hand and God, he can’t take one more second of being this far apart from one another. 

He wraps his arms around David’s neck and clambers into his lap, and David starts giggling and then so does Patrick, because these kitchen chairs were not meant to hold two full grown men and the wood whines in protest, but then David takes his hand and tugs him back up the stairs and they spend the rest of the night showing each other what their love could be if given the chance to flower. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Literally, this fic does not exist in the way it does now without the patient, encouraging, sometimes 11th hour superpowers of our amazing betas [TINN](https://archiveofourown.org/users/this_is_not_nothing/profile), [helvetica](https://archiveofourown.org/users/helvetica_upstart/pseuds/helvetica_upstart), and our sensitivity reader [whetherwoman](https://archiveofourown.org/users/whetherwoman/pseuds/whetherwoman). This beast is 80K longer than sails pitched it to them being, and their beta schedule ended up being just as bonkers as our writing ones. They deserve acutal real life human dollars for all their work, but for now we guess they'll have to settle for an entire universe of digital gratitude <3 <3 <3


	11. Epilogue

For their first anniversary, David buys him a camera.

He doesn’t know exactly when he’d let on that he loved photography — a passing comment surely — but suddenly there it is in a box filled with colorful paper, a Canon J II with Serenar 135mm interchangeable lens. He has no idea how David could afford it, and when he asks, David throws up his hands and yells about how gauche it is to ask how much a gift cost, and then Patrick says something about not being able to afford the new coffee maker now, and David tries to smother him with a pillow so it all evens out.

Later, later, once the sweat has cooled and David has dozed off beside him, Patrick takes his camera out of the box and beams at it. He has no idea how to use it, and can’t wait to learn how. 

He’d use the camera for almost ten years, capturing the big and small memories of their lives often enough that David’s fond, slightly exasperated eye roll joined the rankings of Patrick’s favorite expressions. 

There would be other cameras, of course there would be, but this one would always hold a special place in his heart. This would always be the one that taught him how to bottle lightning into something concrete, small but beautiful. 

*

The first year of Patrick’s real life is one of the most gratifyingly hectic of his existence. From the moment he hugs his family goodbye outside the farmhouse, Rachel’s eyes bright with love and only the shadow of a worry she’s trying desperately hard not to show. Andrew clasps first David’s hand, and then Patrick’s, making solemn promises to take care of things and look after Rachel and Marci. Patrick’s mother cups David’s face and presses two soft kisses to his cheeks and one to his forehead and makes him promise to call her at her place in the city as soon as they get to where they’re going. Patrick’s amazed, but never surprised, at the ease with which David has wormed his way into the hearts of the people Patrick loves. After all, he’d done just the same with Patrick.

He and David work around the clock to get the store ready. Or, Patrick works around the clock, and David works what he calls ‘normal human work hours,’ and it works out perfectly for the both of them. Patrick comes to love those early hours of the day, pushed out of bed by another back-spasming nightmare — although those are less and less frequent— or the itchy restlessness that’s filled him since he’s begun the process of building his new life. He gets to the store, slips his key in the lock, listens to the gentle _schick_ as the deadbolt retracts and then he’s inside, inside _their store_ and every morning he wonders if today is the day that thought stops sending a little thrill down the back of his neck. 

He hasn’t hit that day yet. 

He spends those grey-dawn hours painting, or reading home manuals by low light trying to figure out how _exactly_ one re-wires an old building, or occasionally, when the weather is particularly lovely, throwing open the windows and washing down the walls before heading out for a long, meandering hike through the woods on the edge of town. The bristly pines and low-sitting creeper seem to muffle his world on all sides, and it becomes the perfect place for his mind to slowly pick through the new shades of life he’s finding each day. It’s not the same as the wide stretches of blue Canadian sky, but it still manages to provide Patrick with the same kind of space he’d always associated with home.

_Home._

Patrick spends that first year building himself a family. He’s always had a home with David, but from the minute the car doors open outside the Inn and Alexis and Stevie come pouring out in a tangle of limbs and shrieks and giant hugs for the both of them, Patrick can tell that he’s made the right choice in where to build a life.

The girls pull them into the building in a ball of laughter and questions and “I’ll go get beers” from Stevie and then they’re crowding around a small card table, leaning on and into one another while they sip on fridge-cold drinks and Patrick feels yet another one of the weights around his neck fall off. They’re up so late, suddenly it’s morning again, and they all decide a collective day off is more than necessary. 

Patrick falls to sleep with his back pressed to David’s chest, David’s arms around his waist, the taste of David on his lips. That night, and the following night, and every night after, the days passing in a haze of spreadsheet boxes and learning the whole new language of retail. Patrick watches David negotiate deals, make the store he’d painted for Patrick in words into a brick-and-mortar reality. 

And on the day David flips the sign on the paned glass door from CLOSED to OPEN, looking over at Patrick with his lip between his teeth, his face warring forces of excitement and apprehension as the first customer walks in, and then the second, until the store is buzzing and Patrick is so busy ringing up sales at the register he doesn’t get to do much more than watch.

Watch, as David lands sale after sale, at one point lifting his head just in time to watch Patrick staring and — well, the only word Patrick can think of for what David’s face does is _melting._ It makes something inside Patrick go soft, and almost painfully tender, in a way that still manages to catch him off guard. 

Watch as Stevie and Alexis do their best to bring more product from the back room, to answer customer questions and only sample a reasonable amount of the cosmetic items — although this last point pertains almost entirely to Alexis, Patrick doesn’t fail to note. 

Watch, as cars drive up the main road from Elmdale, stop at the Café across the street, drive up the road toward the Inn and keep going to the creek.

Before long, a handful of those cars park outside the Inn, drawn in by the fresh paint and clean sheets and cheery pots of daisies line the walk, trimmed shrubs that Patrick finds a shocking amount of peace in maintaining. As soon as David is able to, he pays Stevie back, which allows them to put a small television in _every room_ in the Inn, after which the small handful of cars becomes a large handful, a fistful, so many that they have to buy the lot across the street to put in more parking now that they’re booking to capacity. 

The store celebrates the two-year anniversary of opening on the same day that Alexis and Stevie secure the investment money they need to open a second property about an hour up the road in Elmglen. They tell David and Patrick with tremors of excitement in their voices, and David jumps out of his seat fast enough that even Patrick’s taken aback, wrapping his arms around Stevie and spinning her around while she laughs and he yells, “You did it, I told you that you’d do it, I was right and you have to say it.” There’s so much joy and laughter in his voice it’s catching.

Patrick has been saving a bottle of champagne in the small ice-box in the back room of the store for the next time something arises that needs celebrating, and Alexis grabs it with gusto, peeling off the gold foil and tossing it to the floor of the store, shrieking a little with the hollow pop of the cork bottle. She pours them all full flutes while Patrick goes to fetch his new camera from the back room.

Patrick has gotten into the habit of taking it with him on the early morning hikes he went on from time to time, the dappled light through the trees the perfect chance to practice what David so lovingly called his ‘artistic eye’. It’s full of blurry white spots Patrick swears are rabbits, close ups of flowers that make David blush and giggle just a little, while Patrick sincerely asks, “what, David?” When he gets this roll developed, it will be nothing but grey-toned but shiny piles of vines, and leaves, and the occasional bird.

Except the last frame. That will belong to a striking brunette, her face hidden in the shoulder of a tall, dark-eyed man whose head is bent down, buried in her hair while their glasses click together and beside them, a radiate blonde holds hands with a man who shouldn’t be so handsome in his plainness, but beams at the blonde as their clasped hands raise overhead.

If you look close enough, you can just see where Patrick and David are holding hands as they celebrate with the women they love most in the world. 

In the decades to come, this will always be Patrick’s favorite part, even if people have to work a little harder to see it.

*

“Bucolic holiday felicitations, my beloved offspring!” 

No one in the world says hello like Moira Rose, as she breezes through the front door of the little cottage, Johnny trailing behind her with a jovial, “Son! Patrick!” accompanied with a full body hug that makes David squirm a little, and Patrick miss his grandfather more than he’d ever admit. 

They’re in town for exactly three days — just long enough to eat a Christmas/Chanukah dinner (which his father insists on including, even though they missed Chanukah by _several_ days), exchange gifts, and make their way across the country back to California, where Moira’s next production is anxiously awaiting their director. They hadn’t wanted to come, insisted that the kids could all come visit them at the beach of the new year, but David and Patrick had insisted.

“It’s the first year in the new house,” David had whined, phone pressed to his ear as he paced the kitchen, long spiral cord bouncing hypnotically every time he moved. Patrick watches him pace, puts the last few pieces of tape in place on the gifts he’s wrapping — a silver plated glasses chain for Stevie, a pair of gold butterfly clips for Alexis’s hair — and shakes his head at the little white lie. 

It _is_ their first holiday in the house, but that’s not why David wants his parents to come. The reason he wants Moira and Johnny there becomes glaringly obvious when David plucks the envelope from where it’s sitting on the mantelpiece.

“David, what’s this?” Johnny sounds warm, but a little wary, and he sets his coffee mug down on the table and sits back, running a hand over the top of his knee absentmindedly.

“You have to open it, John, asking David ruins the anticipatory incredulity,” Moira chastises, plucking the envelope from his fingers and sliding one finger beneath the flap with a soft _rip._ She pulls out the piece of paper and holds it up to the light, putting her glasses at the tip of her nose and bringing her eyes to focus. A beat passes, and then two, and then her eyes fly to David.

“David?”

He nods, and looks at Patrick, who nods, and Moira gasps and presses the tips of her black leather gloved fingers to her mouth. 

“What? What ‘David’?” Johnny fumbles for the paper as Moira just sits and stares at David, her eyes glassy, Alexis giggling in the corner as Stevie shushes her, determined for once not to distract from the moment at hand. Johnny’s eyes rake the paper once, and then again, stopping at all the places David already has memorized. 

_Official date of Town Incorporation: August 16th, 1950_

_Registered Owner(s): David Rose, co-owner_  
_Patrick Brewer, co-owner_ _  
_ Name of Incorporated Fellowship: Rose Creek

Rose Creek. The home David had built for himself after his entire world had crumbled, the blood, sweat, and tears he’d poured into every ounce of recreation, Patrick at his side, until they’d been able to sit back and realize that they’d started a ball rolling down hill, but the momentum it gained was now entirely its own.

The Inn was at full capacity, adding a second story, and the store had expanded to _three_ nearby locations. The strain of the expansion was running them both ragged, and it didn’t help anything that just a week before the holiday, Patrick had let it slip that he’d overheard the word ‘children’ slip between Stevie and Alexis. 

But none if it matters, as he explains to his parents again, and then a third time, what they’ve already read on the official Deed of Incorporation — he and Patrick own the town. They’ve named the town after David. After David’s family. After a flower that blooms past it’s thorns as if in defiance of all the things life had predicted for it. His father clasps his hands and gruffly whispers an, “Oh, well then.”

His mother shrieks with joy, once she finally understands, and then asks David if that means there’s, “a practicable potentiality for an eponymous roadway for the woman who gave you life?”

“We’ve got three choices set aside,” Patrick says, fondly, and slides a small mimeographed map out of the envelope, too, passing it to Moira, who studies it with a sudden shrewdness that lets Patrick see exactly why Moira Rose was able to impress her way back into Hollywood’s good graces. 

Stevie gives them the print a week later, framed in simple, solid black that earns a little ‘hm’ of approval from David. He spends a long time looking at it, and when he lifts his eyes back to Stevie, palm pressing gently against the glass of the frame, his voice is cracked and on the edge of breaking completely. “Thank you.” 

She shrugs. “Alexis took it.”

David bites the inside of his cheek and nods. “Of course she did.”

That night, David puts the frame in the middle of the mantle, and it stays there for well over a decade, until a picture David takes claims the spot instead. 

It’s shot from the corner of the room, and the only person you can make out clearly is Moira, her eyes full of pride as she looks at David’s face, a piece of paper held loosely in her hands. Johnny’s arms are wrapped around David’s neck, David’s knees bent and his shoulders stooped awkwardly, his face entirely covered by Johnny’s besuited bicep. Patrick leans against the far wall, partially obscured by the Christmas tree, he’s biting his lip and holding a coffee mug with both hands, his eyes locked onto David. He looks proud. In love. 

Throughout the years, it becomes common practice to comment on just how similar he and Moira look in the photograph. 

*

They don’t have any pictures of this day, specifically, because at the time it’s just a day. 

David looks up from the copy of Vogue open on the table in front of him and cocks his head to the side, narrows his eyes a little and says. “I’d like to buy you a ring.”

Patrick swallows the drink of tea he’s just taken. “What kind of ring?”

“The gold kind. Simple, I think. Just a band.” He’s tilting his head a little and squinting at Patrick, a face he always makes when he’s trying to see past the details to the aesthetic of it all. 

“And what finger would I wear this ring on?” David smirks at him and shrugs his shoulders just a little, but the smile that slowly takes over his face is absolutely incandescent. Patrick smiles back and brings his mug back to his lips. “Okay, David. You can buy me a ring.”

So David does. 

They drive to the pawn shop in Elmdale that evening, the radio low and the wind warm as it whips through the lowered windows. They find a single thin band and, miracle of miracles, nestled in between gaudy topaz costume jewelry, a box of four identical gold cuff rings, thick and burnished and slightly scratched. They look lived in, but when they slide them on in the car, receipt rustling in David’s pocket, they look absolutely perfect. Like they were made to exist right there, wrapped around the skin between David’s knuckles. 

Almost as soon as they’re on, Patrick pulls them back off with his teeth, snapping the velvet box shut around them as he presses David back into the soft down of their mattress. 

Pictures or not, it’s a day they never, ever forget, the day they’re married in everything but paper.

*

Patrick starts thinking about family after David’s heart attack. 

David was the first to yell it wasn’t a heart attack, though Patrick and Dr. Christianson had agreed that yes, _he’d had a heart attack._ A mild one, certainly, and the surgery had been textbook, the recovery a dream, but still— _a heart attack._ Patrick had spent a week of sleepless nights in the hospital, first waiting for David to wake up, then soothing him when the pain got too bad between doses, and then encouraging him when the doctor made him get out of bed before he wanted to. The weeks of recovery afterward, helping David clean his surgery scar, helping him bathe and get dressed, helping him _walk,_ had been eye-opening. Had made Patrick see David in another light, something he had started to think wouldn’t be possible any more after so many years together. 

David would be fifty-eight this year, and Patrick was coming up on fifty-five. They’d worked the store endlessly, expanded Rose Apothecary into eight towns, and they’d be opening their new flagship in Ontario next year. They’d signed on with Alexis and Stevie to provide toiletries for the Rosebud Inn Group, now that the franchise agreement had gone through and they were going to begin expanding into the United States. 

They were settled. The cottage was paid off. They had money. 

“Absolutely not,” David says, the morning he brings it up. “Oh my God. _Retire?_ A minor cardiac episode and now you want to close the stores?” 

That David says this while Patrick is helping him sit down at their kitchen table, while leaning heavily on his cane, _is ridiculous,_ but Patrick knows his husband, right down to the marrow so he doesn’t say a word. David rants all through Patrick making them breakfast, working the problem out loud while Patrick plates them their “Bland, oh God, so bland,” sodium-free egg whites, wheat toast and tea. Patrick knows he’s got him when David finally grows quiet. 

He glances over, but it isn’t resignation on David’s face, the understanding that Patrick had mentioned retirement because it was the right move, both financially and personally. 

David looks up at him, heartbreak on his face, and says, “Patrick, if we give it up...what about Lucy?” 

Lucy. The fourteen-year-old girl they employed illegally, because her parents had thrown her out of the house after catching her kissing another girl. The fourteen-year-old girl so prickly her hide was made of nails, impossible to get past, but who had somehow wormed her way into their hearts, with her fly-away blond hair and the smile that — when they could coax it free — transformed her face into something lovely and warm and beautiful. A sign of the sweet spirit underneath. The fourteen-year-old girl sleeping at their store, because she refused to come to their home and she refused to go to a halfway house and she said she’d run away if they called the authorities.

She _had_ run away, twice now, when they’d gotten too far inside the maze of thorns she kept around herself at all times. The last time had been for almost three months, the two of them frantic and trying to find her. She’d shown up one day, filthy and pale and so thin she looked like she’d blow away in a storm. She wouldn’t talk about where she’d been, or what she’d seen, but there hadn’t been any more talk of running away since then. 

Patrick gets up to top off their tea, and when he sits back down David studies him. The salt and pepper of his hair catches in the morning sunlight, the wrinkles at each corner of his eyes permanent now. They make him look like he’s always smiling, and it’s brought a warmth to David’s face as he aged. Sitting here across from him, Patrick is reminded for the millionth time why he fell in love with this man. He takes David’s hand in his, and David turns his palm over so they can link their fingers. “I think she’ll say yes, this time.” 

“No, she won’t,” David says, his voice thick with emotion. “What if we tell her we’re closing the store, and she just disappears again?”

“You didn’t see her when you were in the hospital,” Patrick murmurs, squeezing his fingers. 

“She saw me have a heart attack in the middle of the store, Patrick,” David says, and Patrick hears everything he doesn’t say. That they both thought Lucy would bolt after that, and they'd never see her again.

“Yes, she did. And then she saw you after your surgery, and she saw you recovering.”

That pale slip of a girl, hovering on the fringes like a scared cat, never quite able to come into David’s room, but never quite able to leave, either. She’d slept in the hallway outside the ICU the first night, stood sentinel at the door to his hospital room when David was finally moved to the post-operative floor. She’d never come in while Patrick was there, but the third night after David’s surgery, Patrick had gone back to the house to pick up David’s skincare and socks. When he’d come back, she’d been sitting at David’s bedside, tears pouring down her splotchy, pink face, and Patrick had felt such a swoop of love in his chest for that little girl, who fought so hard to be strong but who just needed someone to take care of her. Patrick wanted them to be those people.

David shakes his head, rubbing his mouth. “She’s outside right now, isn’t she?” 

“Yes.” Just like a scared cat. Patrick takes a sip of his tea. “She’s sitting next to the barn door.”

“Do you think she’ll come in if we ask her to?” 

Patrick never knows how to answer that. Sometimes she would, but most times she’d scream and call him every name she could think of, and then they wouldn’t see her again for a week. Though, Patrick knows, it’s been a while since she’d had one of those episodes, and not since David’s surgery. 

“I’ll try,” he says, and kisses David’s fingers.

The spring sunshine is warm on his face as he steps out the back door of the cottage. He hasn’t let Missy out of the barn yet to graze, which is just as well, because if he’d been working outside already, he doesn’t think Lucy would have stayed. Her eyes dart up to him as he makes his way across the grass, across their pebble driveway separating the barn from the yard. Her sneakers are dirty but her face is clean, and he sits down next to her, pretending not to notice when she tenses. His knees pop loudly, and he grunts as he finally gets down onto his ass, because he’s fifty-five and he’s discovered that popping knees and groaning joints came with the territory. 

“Hi,” he says, not quite looking at her. 

She doesn’t say anything, yanking at a weed next to her shoe. Her hair is a bit stringy, and it falls over her face in a curtain. 

He wishes he could wrap his arms around this child and hug her, tuck her under his chin and promise her that all was okay. He knows better than to try and touch her, but he keeps his body language open, so she knows it would be okay. “Are you hungry?”

“I’m always hungry, isn’t that what you think?” she asks, her sharp blue eyes on him. It’s not the first time she’d said that, and it probably won’t be the last. 

“I do. I do think you’re always hungry.” 

Her eyebrows furrow in confusion. “That’s not your line.” 

“It isn’t?” 

“No. This is where you tell me about being _actually_ hungry in the war, like someone’s grandpa.” 

“Ouch,” Patrick says. “I’ll have you know that C-rations were disgusting, but they were plentiful.”

“What are seat rations?”

“No, _see,_ like the letter. They were big cans full of food, like pork and beans, corned beef, that kind of thing, and they came with coffee and sugar, hard-tack biscuits. Very salty, and you could eat them hot or cold, though you never really wanted to eat them cold if you could avoid it. Things were a bit congealed, especially in the winter.” Lucy’s nose wrinkles, and he can’t help but laugh. “Absolutely as disgusting as you’re imagining.” 

She looks like she doesn’t want to ask, but Patrick has always been able to count on kids finding disgusting things fascinating. “You had to eat them every day?” 

“There wasn’t anything else,” Patrick says, and shrugs. “You eat what’s provided to you, you know?” 

Lucy ducks her head down again, and tugs a bit more at the stubborn weed. She has dirt under her fingernails. “I guess so.” 

“They were hard times. That’s why I like to have so much variety now, and why David and I don’t eat canned food if we can avoid it.” He goes out on a limb, and hopes to God he doesn’t fall. “I think my favorite thing to cook is spaghetti, with fresh-made pasta.” 

The one night they’d been able to convince Lucy to come home with them she’d eaten four plates of it, and an entire loaf of garlic bread by herself. She doesn’t quite meet his eye. “It’s good.”

“I like making things from scratch. It’s soothing.” 

“I’ve never done that before.” 

_Easy, Brewer._ “I’m making it today, for David. It’s his favorite.” 

At the mention of David, she twitches, and her fingers knot in the weeds. 

He pretends he didn’t notice, leaning back against the barn with a sigh. “David isn’t doing very well,” he says, which is a bald-faced lie, and he asks for forgiveness even as he continues. “Not health wise — he’s recovering very well. He’s just listless. Sad.” 

“He can’t move around as much,” Lucy says, and he thinks he sees her chin wobble out of the corner of his eye, but he doesn’t draw attention to it. “He likes being in the garden.”

“He does,” Patrick says, and takes the biggest chance of his life. “I think it'd help him, help his spirits. If you stayed here with us. 

The last time he’d broached this subject, they hadn’t seen her for three months. But that was then, and this was now, and while she still tenses, he can tell that it’s just muscle memory. 

“I’m not your charity case,” she spits, but Patrick isn’t deaf. She couldn’t hide the notes of hope in her voice. 

_Almost there sweetheart,_ he thinks. 

“You’re _not_ a charity case,” he says softly. “I like you. David likes you. _We_ like you, a lot. You’re such a strong person, clearly you can take care of yourself. But, well. Maybe you shouldn't _have_ to take care of yourself. Sometimes, strength means knowing when to ask for help. I know David would feel better if you were close — if he knew you were safe here with us. We want you to feel safe here with us, Lucy.” 

So scared, and so young. “I thought David was going to die,” she whispers.

Christ. “So did I,” Patrick says quietly, voice thick, his lashes immediately beaded with damp. “I don’t think I’ve ever been so scared in my entire life. If you hadn’t been there, he _would_ have died. You saved his life, Lucy. And I don't think I've ever properly said thank you.” 

Her chin trembles and she pulls her knees up to her chest, burying her face against them, and Patrick… Patrick takes a chance. 

She freezes when he scoots closer, and for long, long moments Patrick thinks that he’s made the wrong choice. That she’s going to bolt. 

She doesn’t. Instead, with a low, trembling sound, she lays her head on his shoulder. She smells like dirt and the outdoors, and her hair is like spun gold when he presses his cheek there to the crown of her head. 

Three weeks later, Patrick is in his darkroom developing his current role of film when he comes across a photo he didn’t take. It isn’t the first time David has done this, though those photos always tended to slant more towards the boudoir, or when David needed evidence that the possum was back and eating his azaleas. 

The photo was taken from a distance, but David has always had an eye for light, for color, for symmetry. 

In the photo, Patrick is sitting with his back against the barn, Lucy’s small blond head on his shoulder. He looks relieved, in the photo. Hopeful. Lucy’s face is averted, but there’s a looseness in her tiny frame where she leans against Patrick’s side that suggests comfort, and trust. 

Patrick loves it. He _loves_ it, and he loves David for taking it, and he loves Lucy for taking a chance. 

It’s the first photo someone takes of him with his daughter. It won’t be the last. He and David will fill entire albums of them, of first days of school and replanting flowerbeds, of prom dresses and sock hops, of that small, lovely face blossoming like the sun rising. But that picture, _that picture,_ will always be the first, and it sits framed in a place of honor on the mantle. 

* 

The years pass them by, and each is one more reason for Patrick to be grateful. They expand Rose Apothecary into all of Canada and the northern United States, and they have a board, now, and a CEO who runs the company in their stead. They keep busy with their home, and Lucy and her children, and they _travel,_ God, they see the entire world. They spend summers in Paris, though they never stay at the Gaston again — the memories of that place are too sacred to ever rewrite with new ones. They go to Australia, and Denmark, Italy and Greece; they winter in Florida and take cruises all over the world. And when the time comes that their health no longer allows them to travel, they come home, always, to the cottage. 

And so, the years pass. Rose Creek grows around them from a tiny hamlet to a town, then a community. It becomes known for its antiques, for the flagship store of Rose Apothecary, for its artisanal cheeses and the best Bed and Breakfast in all of Ontario. The eighties come and go, and so do the nineties, and he and David live their best lives, enjoy their time together, and spend it in love. There’s a cancer scare, and Patrick is never quite the same after, so they hire a nurse to come help them. Their granddaughter is always in and out of the house, helping them, buying them groceries. Every night, he and David go to bed together, and fall asleep side by side, and every night, Patrick thanks God that he got to live life next to this man, that he was given the opportunity to love and be loved every single day.

He hears about it, not on the news, but from their granddaughter. She looks just like Lucy did at her age, blond like sunlight with fire in her eyes, but where Lucy had been all sharp angles, bared teeth, Rebecca is sugar personified. She’s twenty-four and a schoolteacher, with a soft, sweet voice and immense love in her heart for animals, children, and her grandfathers. 

She rushes in and throws her arms around him, and he never feels more frail than when she hugs him, with all her strength and vigor of youth. And when she tells him what’s just happened, what the government has done, he can’t stop smiling because for the first time in his lifetime, things are finally, blessedly, going to be better.

It doesn’t matter, not really, not with David a month away from his ninetieth birthday, and Patrick not far behind at eighty-eight. They’d lived a long life together, full of love and family, for the past fifty-seven years. They had Lucy and Rebecca and Alexis, their nephews and their grandnieces and grandnephews, their travels and their memories and this home, their little cottage. They had each other. 

They do this from time to time, pulling out the photo albums Patrick has doggedly maintained all these years, from his first photos, fuzzy black and white with yellowing edged, to the crystal clear pictures with his digital camera that has one too many bells and whistles but which he loves beyond reason. Once, they would drink whiskey together, or wine, while looking at the photos of their lives together, but these days it’s tea with honey which Patrick brews in the kettle they’ve had their entire lives together. 

David doesn’t ask why tonight is a photo album night, but they spread them out on the coffee table and share their favorite between them, the year before the store was a reality, when Alexis and Stevie were so young and bright. Stevie had passed on, five years gone now, and David’s eyes film with tears as they always do, when he sees her picture. 

She’d be ecstatic, Patrick thinks. She’d been such an advocate for LGBTQ rights, was still fighting the good fight well into her eighties, until the day she died. 

He puts on the evening news, knowing what’s coming, but the reality is so much better than the expectation. David’s face _blooms_ with joy, like summer came early. Patrick knows what David will say, even before they watch the cheering crowds on the evening news. “Well, will you look at that.” 

Patrick can’t help but smile. “I don’t think I’ll fill out a tuxedo the way I once did, sweetheart, but I promise I can make the blue cardigan with the brown buttons look nice.” 

David brings Patrick’s hand, gnarled with arthritis, to his lips. He kisses gently along the knuckles, along the first finger, and the second. He kisses the ring on Patrick’s finger, burnished with age, the match to his own, that they’d traded fifty-seven years ago. “I’ll press your shirt for you. The one with the stripes, that I like.” 

Patrick smiles, and reaches across the table to kiss him. 

They get married on August 16th, 2003 with their entire family in attendance, to the littlest Rose, Amber, Alexis and Stevie’s four-year-old granddaughter. It’s a big family, a sprawling family, built on the shoulders of a profound and tremendous love. Alexis cries openly and tells them both that Johnny and Moira would have been proud.

They all go to a nice restaurant in Elmdale afterward, and David and Patrick have champagne, and chocolate profiteroles, and crackers and cheese. They don’t let go of each other’s hands, not once. And when the children ask them to tell their love story again, David looks at him with shining eyes and says, “Well, Mr. Rose?” 

Patrick smiles, and looks into the faces of the next generation of his family, and says, “I met your grandfather at a GI Bar in World War Two Paris. He was wearing a jacket too short in the sleeve, but that was alright, because I was wearing a hat too small for my big head,” just to hear his children laugh. 

It’s the best day of Patrick’s life, in a long series of best days.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, friends! Sails, here, taking control of the notes because a) Di won't see these until they're up and B) I can, I just want to take a moment to say what a joy and what an honor it’s been to write this with her. I slid into her DMs with this wild AU idea, pitched it to her as 100K, all to be written before we published (BAHAHAHAHAHA TO BOTH) and she went through madness to stick to my type A desire for a weekly schedule. And, because of her, this story beats with a heart all it’s own.
> 
> There’s something...fortuitous feeling that we started writing this when the world went on lockdown and are finishing as a lot of places (unfortunately) are opening back up. World wars and pandemics can change damn near everything about the ways we conceptualize and frame the world around us and while it’s not an exact parallel, the background forces will always be a lingering shade to the memory of writing this story I love with all my heart. 
> 
> We want to extend one more ginormous outpouring of thanks to our amazing betas, who are all artists in their own right, who each added their own perfect, indefinable touch to this work, making it what is. We couldn’t imagine having done this without [TINN](https://archiveofourown.org/users/this_is_not_nothing/profile), [helvetica](https://archiveofourown.org/users/helvetica_upstart/pseuds/helvetica_upstart), and our sensitivity reader [whetherwoman](https://archiveofourown.org/users/whetherwoman/pseuds/whetherwoman).
> 
> And of course to every one who read, commented, kudosed, came to yell at us on Tumblr or over in the Rosebudd — the words “thank you” aren’t enough. We write for ourselves, but we write for you, and all the love and support were the life rafts we clung to when things got bad (looking at you, Chapter From Hell). You’re all rock stars, beautiful flowers in the garden of this fandom. Thank you for reading.

**Author's Note:**

> Overall inspiration and blame for this story can be placed at the feet of the EW Digital Covers Dan and Noah did, specifically [this Casablanca version.](https://timeincsecure-a.akamaihd.net/rtmp_uds/219646971/202004/2682/219646971_6148199922001_6148198870001.mp4?pubId=219646971&videoId=6148198870001)
> 
> Title of the story comes from the Mary Oliver poem ["I Don't Want to Live a Small Life"](https://alifegivinglent.wordpress.com/i-dont-want-to-live-a-small-life/), which, like all Mary Oliver, should be read a million times and then written on your heart.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[art] trying new things can always be a little dangerous](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25292011) by [SparklesMagicLightLove](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SparklesMagicLightLove/pseuds/SparklesMagicLightLove)
  * [[Podfic] I Carry These Heart-Shapes Only To You](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26357206) by [fairmanor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fairmanor/pseuds/fairmanor)
  * [[art] I Carry These Heart-shapes Only To You - cover art](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27567907) by [Gehrminator](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gehrminator/pseuds/Gehrminator)




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